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Fiber-optic Sensing of Repeating Icequakes and Firnquake Swarms at the South Pole

Description: 

Glacier seismic activity, ranging from deep ice to shallow firn (rounded and well-bonded snow that is older than one year), provides critical insights into cryospheric dynamics and offers a means to study its responses to and impacts on climate change. In this study, we employed distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology, which transformed an 8-km optical fiber into a dense array of thousands of strain sensors, for long-term seismic monitoring at the South Pole. Over one year of continuous recordings in 2023, we detected tens of icequakes and hundreds of firnquakes. Two groups of repeating icequakes were identified, likely driven by basal glacial stick-slip in this slow-moving glacier zone of the Antarctic interior. Our findings also revealed the strong impact of extreme atmospheric weather events on firn activity in the shallow cryosphere. Specifically, the coldest weather events triggered three swarms of firnquakes near the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. By applying array processing techniques to the DAS data, we detailed these icequakes and firnquakes and investigated their physical mechanisms. This study demonstrates the potential of long-term DAS observations to advance the understanding of cryoseismic events driven by interactions among the atmosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere in polar and glacial regions.

Session: Fiber-optic Sensing Applications in Seismology - II

Type: Oral

Date: 4/15/2025

Presentation Time: 10:45 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Qiushi

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Poster Number: 64

Authors