Environment-modulated glacial seismicity near Dalk Glacier in East
Antarctica revealed by deep clustering
Abstract
East Antarctica constitutes two-thirds of the Antarctic continent, where
glacier systems have been thought to be more stable than those in West
Antarctica. However, the stability could be increasingly undermined by
global warming, intensifying local and regional glacial activities.
Here, using deep unsupervised learning, we analyze seismic signals
recorded by a dense nodal array near Dalk glacier in the Larsemann
Hills, East Antarctica, in austral summer (6 Dec 2019 – 2 Jan 2020). We
apply an autoencoder to automatically extract event features and input
them to a Gaussian mixture model for clustering. During the operation
period, three main types of seismic signals are identified:
high-frequency monochromatic events, broadband short-duration icequakes,
and low-frequency long-duration events. By comparing these events to
environmental observations (local wind speed, temperature, tide level,
and satellite imagery), we infer that the first type was wind-induced
vibration, the second type thermal contraction/basal slip, and the third
type water-filled crevassing/iceberg calving. The latter two glacial
activities appear to be modulated by temperature and tide, respectively,
implying the susceptibility of Dalk glacier to environment conditions in
East Antarctica. Our results demonstrate that deep clustering is an
effective means to identify diverse glacial seismicity and contributes
to the rapid growth of passive glacier seismic monitoring.