1-km bed topography digital elevation model (DEM) of the Weddell Sea sector, West Antarctica

We present a new bed elevation digital elevation model (DEM) of the Weddell Sea sector, West Antarctica. The DEM consists a total area of ~125,000 km² covering the Institute, Möller and Foundation ice streams and the Bungenstock Ice Rise with a 1 km spatial resolution. 

In order to produce the bed elevation DEM, ice thickness DEM was formed from the available radio-echo sounding (RES) data using the 'Topo to Raster' function in ArcGIS. The RES data used in this study were compiled from four main sources which are (1) Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) survey collected during several campaigns in the 1970s (Drewry, 1983), (2) British Antarctic Survey (BAS) airborne radar survey conducted during the austal summer 2006/07 (GRADES/IMAGE) (Ashmore et al., 2014). , (3) BAS airborne survey accomplished during the Institute and Möller Antarctic Funding Initiative (IMAFI) in 2010/2011 (Ross et al., 2012) and (4) Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheet (CReSIS) data during the NASA Operation IceBridge (OIB) programme in 2012, 2014 and 2016 (Gogineni, 2012). The ice thickness picks were gridded at a uniform 1-km spacing using the Nearest Neighbour interpolation within the Topo to Raster. The ice thickness DEM was later subtracted from the 1-km ice-sheet surface elevation derived from the combined European Remote Sensing Satellite-1 (ERS-1) radar and Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser satellite altimetry DEM (Bamber et al., 2009), to produce the bed topography referenced to the Polar Stereographic projection (Snyder, 1987).