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BEDMAP3 - Ice thickness, bed and surface elevation for Antarctica - gridding products

We present here Bedmap3, the latest suite of gridded products describing surface elevation, ice-thickness and the seafloor and subglacial bed elevation of Antarctica south of 60degS.

Bedmap3 incorporates and adds to all post-1950s datasets previously used for Bedmap1 and Bedmap2, including 84 new aero-geophysical surveys by 15 data providers, an additional 52 million data points and 1.9 million line-kilometres of measurement. This has filled notable gaps in East Antarctica, including the South Pole and Pensacola basin, Dronning Maud Land, Recovery Glacier and Dome Fuji, Princess Elizabeth Land, plus the Antarctic Peninsula, West Antarctic coastlines, and the Transantarctic Mountains. Our new Bedmap3/RINGS grounding line similarly consolidates multiple recent mappings into a single, spatially coherent feature. Combined with updated maps of surface topography, ice shelf thickness, rock outcrops and bathymetry, Bedmap3 reveals in much greater detail the subglacial landscape and distribution of Antarctica''s ice, providing new opportunities to interpret continental-scale landscape evolution and to model in detail the past and future evolution of the Antarctic ice sheets.

Sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the Bedmap3 Action group aims to produce a new map and datasets of Antarctic ice thickness and bed topography for the international scientific community.

The associated Bedmap datasets are listed here: https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/bedmap/#data

Simple

Alternate title
Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01615
Date (Publication)
2024-11-18
Identifier
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01615
Custodian
  British Antarctic Survey
High Cross, Madingley Road , Cambridge , CB3 0ET , UK
+44 (0)1223 221400
Originator
  NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre - Pritchard, H., Fretwell, P., Fremand, A., Bodart, J., Kirkham, J., Aitken, A., Bamber, J., Bell, R., Bianchi, C., Bingham, R., Blankenship, D., Casassa, G., Catania, G., Christianson, K., Conway, H., Corr, H., Cui, X., Damaske, D., Damn, V., ... Zirizzotti, A.
High Cross, Madingley , Cambridge , CB3 0ET , UK
+44 (0)1223 221400
Maintenance and update frequency
unknown Unknown
Keywords
  • NDGO0001
NERC OAI Harvesting
  • NERC_DDC
GCMD Parameter Valids
  • EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets
  • EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Elevation/Ice Sheet Elevation
  • EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Thickness/Ice Sheet Thickness
  • EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Topography/Ice Sheet Topography
BAS Free-text keywords
  • Antarctica
  • BEDMAP
  • Elevation
  • Ice thickness
Use limitation

This data is covered by a Creative Commons License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Further by downloading this data the user acknowledges that they agree with the NERC data policy (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy.asp), and the following conditions:

1. To cite the data and the Bedmap3 publication in any publication as follows:

DATA:

Pritchard, H., Fretwell, P., Fremand, A., Bodart, J., Kirkham, J., Aitken, A., Bamber, J., Bell, R., Bianchi, C., Bingham, R., Blankenship, D., Casassa, G., Catania, G., Christianson, K., Conway, H., Corr, H., Cui, X., Damaske, D., Damn, V., ... Zirizzotti, A. (2024). BEDMAP3 - Ice thickness, bed and surface elevation for Antarctica - gridding products (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/2d0e4791-8e20-46a3-80e4-f5f6716025d2

PAPER:

Pritchard, H.D., Fretwell, P.T., Fremand, A.C. et al. Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica. Sci Data 12, 414 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y

2. The user recognizes the limitations of data. Use of the data is at the users'' own risk, and there is no warranty as to the quality or accuracy of any data, or the fitness of the data for your intended use. The data are not necessarily fully quality assured and cannot be expected to be free from measurement uncertainty, systematic biases, or errors of interpretation or analysis, and may include inaccuracies in error margins quoted with the data.

Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints

This data is covered by a Creative Commons License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Further by downloading this data the user acknowledges that they agree with the NERC data policy (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy.asp), and the following conditions:

1. To cite the data and the Bedmap3 publication in any publication as follows:

DATA:

Pritchard, H., Fretwell, P., Fremand, A., Bodart, J., Kirkham, J., Aitken, A., Bamber, J., Bell, R., Bianchi, C., Bingham, R., Blankenship, D., Casassa, G., Catania, G., Christianson, K., Conway, H., Corr, H., Cui, X., Damaske, D., Damn, V., ... Zirizzotti, A. (2024). BEDMAP3 - Ice thickness, bed and surface elevation for Antarctica - gridding products (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/2d0e4791-8e20-46a3-80e4-f5f6716025d2

PAPER:

Pritchard, H.D., Fretwell, P.T., Fremand, A.C. et al. Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica. Sci Data 12, 414 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y

2. The user recognizes the limitations of data. Use of the data is at the users'' own risk, and there is no warranty as to the quality or accuracy of any data, or the fitness of the data for your intended use. The data are not necessarily fully quality assured and cannot be expected to be free from measurement uncertainty, systematic biases, or errors of interpretation or analysis, and may include inaccuracies in error margins quoted with the data.

Distance
500  m
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Topic category
  • Elevation
  • Environment
  • Geoscientific information
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Begin date
1966-01-01
End date
2024-11-01
Reference system identifier
OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
Distribution format
Distributor
  Polar Data Centre - British Antarctic Survey
+44 (0)1223 221400
Protocol
http
Name
GET DATA
Function
download Download
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification
INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Date
Explanation
See the referenced specification
Pass
No
Statement

All the grids have a cell size of 500m in the WGS 1984 Antarctic Polar Stereographic projection (EPSG:3031). Some specific quality control checks and corrections (e.g. negative height relative to sea level for ''sea'' cells while ''non-sea'' cells have positive values) have been undertaken and are extensively described in the associated paper (Pritchard et al.).

The uncertainty grids have been calculated through error budgets based upon a combination of published uncertainties and our own tests of accuracy and precision. The input datasets inherently have uncertainties with differing statistical distributions, and not all are well known. Furthermore, most Bedmap3 cells have values that are interpolated between sparse observations, and the uncertainties in this process are also difficult to quantify. Our uncertainties are therefore a best estimate based on the available evidence, given to approximately the 1-sigma level.

File identifier
GB_NERC_BAS_PDC_01615 XML
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Date stamp
2024-11-18
Metadata standard name
NERC profile of ISO19115:2003
Metadata standard version
1.0
Point of contact
  British Antarctic Survey
+44 (0)1223 221400
Dataset URI
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id=GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01615
 
 

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