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Widespread longitudinal snow dunes in Antarctica shaped by sintering

Nature Geoscience volume 17, pages 889–895 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The surface of Antarctica is continuously shaped by erosion, blowing snow and deposition, resulting in diverse aeolian bedforms akin to those observed in subtropical sand deserts. However, although dunes are universally recognized as a climate and environmental proxy, the properties of snow dunes are not well understood. Here, using satellite images covering most of Antarctica, we report the widespread occurrence (>95% of the area studied) of linear dunes that are between 100 and 1,000 m in length and aligned with the local resultant snow drift direction (61% are longitudinal dunes). On the basis of sand dune theory, we suggest that these snow dunes grow by elongation, often under unidirectional wind regimes. The predominance of the elongating mode indicates a low availability of mobile snow particles. This limited availability prevails at the continental scale due to a subtle balance between snow sintering, which limits erosion, and strong winds, which rapidly remove snowfall. These characteristics result from specific meteorological conditions that distinguish Antarctica from other snow-covered regions, and may shift with future climate changes. We suggest that snow sintering not only influences Antarctic aeolian landform evolution but also regulates the amount of snow sublimated during transport, an uncertain term in the ice-sheet mass balance.

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Fig. 1: Photographs and satellite images of typical snow bedforms found in Antarctica with wind direction.
Fig. 2: Dune orientations and wind direction.
Fig. 3: Spatial distribution of the mode and comparison with the observations.

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Data availability

The ERA5 reanalysis hourly data on single levels from 1940 to the present are available from the Copernicus Climate Data Store at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=overview. The Sentinel-2 data are available from the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem repository at https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/. The Landsat 8 data are available from the US Geological Survey online repository at https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/. The datasets generated during the current study are available from the Earth System Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.57932/720db223-3073-465b-a427-d5742235dcfe.

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Acknowledgements

M.P. acknowledges ENS Paris-Saclay for funding. C.N. acknowledges the financial support of the French National Research Agency through grants ANR-18-IDEX-0001 and ANR-23-CE56-0008. Perceptually uniform colour maps are used in certain figures66. We acknowledge the Norwegian Polar Institute’s Quantarctica package56.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IGE, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, Grenoble, France

    Marine Poizat, Ghislain Picard, Laurent Arnaud, Charles Amory & Fanny Brun

  2. Institut de physique du globe de Paris, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Paris, France

    Clément Narteau

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Contributions

With advice from L.A., G.P. and C.N., M.P. processed the Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 images. C.N. facilitated the analysis and comparison of the results with the sand dune theory. C.A. aided in interpreting the results. F.B. processed the Pléiades image. M.P. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Ghislain Picard.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Simon Filhol and Giacomo Traversa for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tamara Goldin, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Map of the dune orientation at high-resolution.

Map of the dune orientation at 2.5 × 2.5 km2 resolution retrieved from satellite imagery in November and December 2018–2021.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–13, Table 1, Text and Notes with Figs. 14 and 15.

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Poizat, M., Picard, G., Arnaud, L. et al. Widespread longitudinal snow dunes in Antarctica shaped by sintering. Nat. Geosci. 17, 889–895 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01506-1

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