Abstract The Ross Ice Shelf (RIS) in West Antarctica experienced extensive surface melting in January 2016, driven by warm humid air transported from over the Southern Ocean. Few studies have reported increased atmospheric water vapor and turbulent mixing during this event in this region, where the availability of surface measurements is challenging due to its remoteness and extreme conditions. Here, we used atmospheric estimates from a network of 13 GNSS receivers deployed on the RIS during the austral summer of 2015–2016. We estimated a spatiotemporally varying structure function across the network to quantify the relative strength of atmospheric turbulence, which exceeded values during non‐melting periods in the RIS by a factor of about 4. This result further supports the atmospheric connection of the ice‐shelf melting event. The result also demonstrates a new application of GNSS not previously studied, namely, ice‐shelf melting through turbulence sensitivity in the polar troposphere.
Mondal et al. (Fri,) studied this question.