pdf WP039: DML-RINGS and Enderby Land RINGS – Opening Extensive International Collaboration to Close Critical Data Gaps for Sea-level Projections

Many coastal regions in Antarctica remain inadequately surveyed or totally un-surveyed, which really hampers the development of our knowledge on how the Antarctic Ice Sheet and Southern Ocean will behave in the warming world in the coming centuries. Within SCAR, RINGS is an effort aiming to develop a coordinated framework that will facilitate and enable complementary and comprehensive airborne surveys in the coastal zone of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. On this basis an initiative has been taken to develop some early efforts in Dronning Maud Land (DML) and Enderby Land, through broad collaboration and contributions by national programs active in these regions and beyond. It is suggested that Parties lend their support to the pan-Antarctic RINGS initiative and encourage coordinated regional efforts to close data gaps, using the DML and Enderby Land effort as useful example and test case for the broader Antarctic needs.