HEATMAP — Heat flow and lithospheric properties in West Antarctica and its implication on cryospheric processes

• Applicant: Maximilian Lowe, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Geophysics ; Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 580540881

Antarctica is a key driver of sea level rise in a warming climate, threatening coastal communities. However, future sea level projections are associated with high uncertainties, partly because Antarctic geology remains poorly understood. Subglacial geology has a strong impact on geothermal heat flow, which can influence the rheology of the ice and cause basal melting. Both processes can facilitate enhanced ice flow, contributing to ice sheet instability, which will increase sea level rise rates. The West Antarctic Rift System is of critical importance because the overlaying ice sheet is losing ice mass at accelerating rates, yet subglacial geological properties remain largely unresolved. For instance, geophysical heat flow estimates are conflicting and rely often on single datasets and do not account for heterogeneities in the crust, effectively neglecting geology. Hence, interdisciplinary geophysical solutions are required to understand Antarctica’s geology and its geothermal heat flow. This project will reveal subglacial geology, crustal properties and geological boundary conditions based on interdisciplinary geophysical approaches to solve the physical properties and thermal regime of the West Antarctic Rift System. This is achieved by three distinct but interlinked research objectives (RO’s): • RO1: Establishing a high-resolution 3D crustal model of West Antarctica, based on joint inversion of airborne gravity and magnetic data combined with seismological boundary conditions. Their petrophysical properties in terms of thermal conductivity and heat production are inferred by linking the inverted density and susceptibilities to known rock types. • RO2: implementation of the newly established high resolution crustal model into a 3D thermal lithospheric model based on an integrated geophysical-petrological modelling scheme to solve for both Earth’s mantle structure and heat contribution to obtain a robust subglacial heat flow. • RO3: Quantifying the impact of the solid Earth on sea level rise predictions by integrating both the newly developed and existing heat flow models into existing state of the art ice sheet model such as Elmer/Ice and UFEMISM. Achieving this will a) develop an interdisciplinary geophysical framework to better define subglacial heat flow in Antarctica by accounting for critical subglacial geology. This will provide a benchmark approach for accurately representing these poorly constrained parameters in ice sheet models, improving resolution and confidence beyond current capabilities. b) Provide easy-to-implement data products of geological boundary conditions and heat flow for future icesheet simulations. c) enable the geology community to rethink the thermal regime in West Antarctica in a geodynamic and tectonic context by solving the current dispute of a hot or cold rift system and d) provide insights on the sensitivity of geothermal heat flow on sea level rise rate predictions.

• DFG Programme: Position