Surface strain rates and crevassing of CampbellGlacier Tongue in East Antarctica analysed by tidecorrectedDInSAR

Abstract

This research presents the measurement of surface strain rates over Campbell Glacier Tongue (CGT) in East Antarctica from tide-corrected ice velocity derived by removing the vertical tidal deflection from the 14 COSMO-SkyMed 1-day differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar images obtained in 2011. The hinge zone of CGT shows large longitudinal, transverse, shear, and vertical strain rates, especially in a heavy crevassing band, while the freely floating zone shows very small strain rates. This represents that the surface deformation by ice flow in the hinge zone is significantly larger than that in the freely floating zone. The orientations of crevasses in the hinge zone agree reasonably well with the directions orthogonal to the axes of the most tensile strain rates calculated from the tide-corrected ice velocity, which demonstrates that the crevassing is attributed to the gravitational ice flow rather than to the tidal flexure.