Large-scale climate modes dominate recent ice mass and elevation variations in much of East Antarctica

Large-scale climate modes have recently been shown to dominate the non-linear variability of Antarctic mass over the last 20 years. We explore these results in further detail in the context of East Antarctica and expand on this work to report on new analyses of Antarctic elevation change from satellite altimetry. Altimetric measurements provide insights into spatial variation of these signals at two orders of magnitude higher spatial resolution than mass-change measurements from GRACE, allowing for resolution of variability at sub-glacier scale. Exploring the same period as the GRACE data (2002-2021) we show that about 75% of the variance of the Totten Glacier elevation can be explained by a combination of Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and ENSO. Denman Glacier shows almost no non-linear variance over 2002-2021 but about 30% of the present signal is explainable by SAM with no evident ENSO response. Despite this, much of the signal is not focused on the outlet glaciers but diffusely spread across the interior, consistent with surface mass balance. We show that much of this signal can be explained by models of firn densification, although different models have different levels of agreement with the data at relevant decadal periods. We will show detailed results for Wilkes Subglacial Basin and Dronning Maud Land.