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On Feasibility to Detect Volcanoes Hidden under Ice of Antarctica via their “Gravitational Signal”

Authors:
Jaroslav Klokočník
Aleš Bezděk
Jan Kostelecký

Keywords: gravity field model EIGEN 6C4; Bedmap 2; functions of disturbing potential; volcano; Antarctica

Abstract:
Many not yet discovered volcanoes may be hidden under thick layers of ice in Antarctica. Discovery of two volcanoes active under the ice (from seismic network), new gravitational field models with high resolution (like EIGEN 6C4) based also on gradiometry data from satellite GOCE and progress in mapping topography of bedrock (BEDMAP 2), mostly from remote sensing by satellites, has been inspiring to seek for hypothetic volcanoes hidden under ice of Antarctica by using these data sources. Our method is novel. We do not work with direct measurements like terrestrial gravity anomalies or airborne gradiometry, but with spherical harmonic expansion for the gravitational potential. This approach is not local, but regional and global, thus it has a lower resolution than the local data. We make use of analogy with the “gravitational signal” known for volcanoes and other structures in other parts of the Earth. We utilize various functionals and functions (not only ordinary gravity anomalies) of the disturbing geopotential (being represented by harmonic coefficients in expansion of the potential to spherical harmonic series, namely by EIGEN 6C4 to degree and order 2160). We claim that our method is promising for future successful search for subglacial volcanoes, having of course in hands also other than satellite data. Our present-day attempts to discover such volcanoes hardly can be of big success, because of low resolution (mainly) of the existing gravity data and (partly) due to a low resolution of even the best bedrock topography of Antarctica now available.

Pages: 128 to 130

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: April 24, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-393X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-469-5

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from April 24, 2016 to April 28, 2016