East Antarctic surfact mass balance in the Anthropocene: observations and multiscale modelling - Mass2Ant

The climate of the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere has changed considerably over the last decades, but the origin and long-term relevance of those changes are not well understood, in particular because the short instrumental records do not allow documenting the full range of variability of the Southern Hemisphere climate system. Furthermore, the Antarctic climate system is very complex with strong interactions between the ice sheet, atmosphere, ocean and sea ice. Within this complex system small scale variations often have large scale consequences, while regional processes are partly controlled by large scale dynamics. Therefore it is crucial to link the dynamics that affect Antarctica at different spatial and temporal scales in order to make progress in our understanding, and increase the confidence in the future projections for Antarctica. Within this framework, we propose to study the surface mass balance (SMB) in the Princess Ragnhild Coast (PRC) region.