Cryo-seismicity triggered by ice mass discharge through the Antarctic subglacial hydrographic network

Abstract

We analyze seismic time series collected during experimental campaigns in the area of the David Glacier, South Victoria Land, Antarctica, between 2003 and 2016. We observe hundreds of repeating seismic events, characterized by highly correlated waveforms (cross-correlation > 0.95), which mainly occur in the floating area between the grounding and the floating line of the ice stream. The joint analysis of seismic occurrences and observed local tide measurements seem to show that seismicity is not triggered by a seasonal, regular, periodic forcing such as the ocean tide, but more likely by transient irregular impulses. We consider possible environmental processes and their impact on the coupling between the glacier flow and the bedrock brittle failure. Our results suggest that clustered and repeated seismic events may be correlated with transient episodes of mass ice discharge (observed by satellite GRACE and GRACE-FO experiments) through the subglacial hydrographic system that originates upstream of the glacier and extends to the grounding zone, lubricating the interface with the bedrock.