. 2025 Mar 10;12(1):414.

doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y.

Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica

Hamish D Pritchard¹, Peter T Fretwell², Alice C Fremand³, Julien A Bodart^{4

5}, James D Kirkham³, Alan Aitken⁶, Jonathan Bamber^{7

8}, Robin Bell⁹, Cesidio Bianchi¹⁰, Robert G Bingham¹¹, Donald D Blankenship¹², Gino Casassa^{13

14}, Knut Christianson¹⁵, Howard Conway¹⁵, Hugh F J Corr³, Xiangbin Cui¹⁶, Detlef Damaske¹⁷, Volkmar Damm¹⁷, Boris Dorschel¹⁸, Reinhard Drews¹⁹, Graeme Eagles¹⁸, Olaf Eisen^{18

20}, Hannes Eisermann¹⁸, Fausto Ferraccioli^{3

21}, Elena Field³, René Forsberg²², Steven Franke¹⁹, Vikram Goel²³, Siva Prasad Gogineni²⁴, Jamin Greenbaum^{12

25}, Benjamin Hills²⁶, Richard C A Hindmarsh³, Andrew O Hoffman⁹, Nicholas Holschuh²⁷, John W Holt²⁸, Angelika Humbert^{18

20}, Robert W Jacobel²⁹, Daniela Jansen¹⁸, Adrian Jenkins³⁰, Wilfried Jokat^{18

20}, Lenneke Jong^{31

32}, Tom A Jordan³, Edward C King³, Jack Kohler³³, William Krabill³⁴, Joséphine Maton³⁵, Mette Kusk Gillespie³⁶, Kirsty Langley³⁷, Joohan Lee³⁸, German Leitchenkov^{39

40}, Cartlon Leuschen⁴¹, Bruce Luyendyk⁴², Joseph A MacGregor⁴³, Emma MacKie⁴⁴, Geir Moholdt³⁵, Kenichi Matsuoka³⁵, Mathieu Morlighem⁴⁵, Jérémie Mouginot^{46

47}, Frank O Nitsche⁹, Ole A Nost⁴⁸, John Paden⁴¹, Frank Pattyn⁴⁹, Sergey Popov⁵⁰, Eric Rignot^{46

51

52}, David M Rippin⁵³, Andrés Rivera⁵⁴, Jason L Roberts^{31

32}, Neil Ross⁵⁵, Antonia Ruppel¹⁷, Dustin M Schroeder^{56

57}, Martin J Siegert⁵⁸, Andrew M Smith³, Daniel Steinhage¹⁸, Michael Studinger⁵⁹, Bo Sun¹⁶, Ignazio Tabacco¹⁰, Kirsty J Tinto⁹, Stefano Urbini¹⁰, David G Vaughan³, Douglas S Wilson⁶⁰, Duncan A Young¹², Achille Zirizzotti¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. hprit@bas.ac.uk.
² British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. ptf@bas.ac.uk.
³ British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK.
⁴ Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁵ Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁶ School of Earth and Oceans and the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
⁷ School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
⁸ Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
⁹ Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, USA.
¹⁰ Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy.
¹¹ School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
¹² Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA.
¹³ General Directorate of Water (DGA), Santiago, Chile.
¹⁴ University of Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile.
¹⁵ Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
¹⁶ Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, China.
¹⁷ Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Hanover, Germany.
¹⁸ Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
¹⁹ Department of Geosciences, Tübingen University, Tübingen, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Geoscience, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
²¹ Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Trieste, Italy.
²² DTU Space, Lyngby, Denmark.
²³ National Centre for Polar & Ocean Research (NCPOR), Ministry of Earth Sciences, Vasco-da Gama, Goa, India.
²⁴ University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA.
²⁵ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California in San Diego, La Jolla, USA.
²⁶ Colorado School of Mines, Department of Geophysics, Golden, CO, USA.
²⁷ Amherst College, Amherst, USA.
²⁸ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
²⁹ St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, 55057, USA.
³⁰ Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
³¹ Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, Australia.
³² Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
³³ Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, Tromsø, Norway.
³⁴ NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA, USA.
³⁵ Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromso, Norway.
³⁶ Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Sogndal, Norway.
³⁷ Asiaq, Greenland Survey, Nuuk, Greenland.
³⁸ Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, South Korea.
³⁹ Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean, St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁴⁰ Saint Petersburg State University, Petersburg, Russia.
⁴¹ Centre for Remote Sensing and Integrated Systems, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.
⁴² Earth Research Institute, University of California in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA.
⁴³ Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
⁴⁴ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA.
⁴⁵ Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA.
⁴⁶ Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴⁷ University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, IGE, Grenoble, France.
⁴⁸ Oceanbox.io, Tromsø, Norway.
⁴⁹ Laboratoire de Glaciologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
⁵⁰ Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition, St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁵¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁵² Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA.
⁵³ Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, York, UK.
⁵⁴ Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁵⁵ School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
⁵⁶ Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁸ University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, UK.
⁵⁹ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA.
⁶⁰ Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA.

PMID: 40064916
PMCID: PMC11893747
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y

Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica

Hamish D Pritchard et al. Sci Data. 2025.

. 2025 Mar 10;12(1):414.

doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. hprit@bas.ac.uk.
² British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. ptf@bas.ac.uk.
³ British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK.
⁴ Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁵ Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁶ School of Earth and Oceans and the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
⁷ School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
⁸ Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
⁹ Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, USA.
¹⁰ Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy.
¹¹ School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
¹² Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA.
¹³ General Directorate of Water (DGA), Santiago, Chile.
¹⁴ University of Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile.
¹⁵ Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
¹⁶ Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, China.
¹⁷ Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Hanover, Germany.
¹⁸ Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
¹⁹ Department of Geosciences, Tübingen University, Tübingen, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Geoscience, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
²¹ Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Trieste, Italy.
²² DTU Space, Lyngby, Denmark.
²³ National Centre for Polar & Ocean Research (NCPOR), Ministry of Earth Sciences, Vasco-da Gama, Goa, India.
²⁴ University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA.
²⁵ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California in San Diego, La Jolla, USA.
²⁶ Colorado School of Mines, Department of Geophysics, Golden, CO, USA.
²⁷ Amherst College, Amherst, USA.
²⁸ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
²⁹ St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, 55057, USA.
³⁰ Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
³¹ Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, Australia.
³² Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
³³ Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, Tromsø, Norway.
³⁴ NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA, USA.
³⁵ Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromso, Norway.
³⁶ Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Sogndal, Norway.
³⁷ Asiaq, Greenland Survey, Nuuk, Greenland.
³⁸ Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, South Korea.
³⁹ Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean, St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁴⁰ Saint Petersburg State University, Petersburg, Russia.
⁴¹ Centre for Remote Sensing and Integrated Systems, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.
⁴² Earth Research Institute, University of California in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA.
⁴³ Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
⁴⁴ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA.
⁴⁵ Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA.
⁴⁶ Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴⁷ University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, IGE, Grenoble, France.
⁴⁸ Oceanbox.io, Tromsø, Norway.
⁴⁹ Laboratoire de Glaciologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
⁵⁰ Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition, St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁵¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁵² Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA.
⁵³ Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, York, UK.
⁵⁴ Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁵⁵ School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
⁵⁶ Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁸ University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, UK.
⁵⁹ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA.
⁶⁰ Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA.

PMID: 40064916
PMCID: PMC11893747
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-025-04672-y

Abstract

We present Bedmap3, the latest suite of gridded products describing surface elevation, ice-thickness and the seafloor and subglacial bed elevation of the Antarctic south of 60 °S. Bedmap3 incorporates and adds to all post-1950s datasets previously used for 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. These efforts have filled notable gaps including in major mountain ranges and the deep interior of East Antarctica, along West Antarctic coastlines and on the Antarctic Peninsula. 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 the past and future evolution of the Antarctic ice sheets.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

**Fig. 1**
Schematic showing the Bedmp3 source datasets (white boxes) combining to make intermediate products (blue boxes) and ultimately the final set of grids (orange boxes) and their uncertainties (yellow boxes). Note that the surface grid has a uniform estimated uncertainty (Section *Uncertainty estimates*).

**Fig. 2**
The survey coverage of Antarctica has improved since Bedmap2. This has decreased the distance from interpolated cells to ice thickness survey data (black lines) from that of (a) Bedmap2 (ref. ) to that of (b) Bedmap3. P = Pine Island Glacier, T = Thwaites Glacier, R = Recovery Glacier, PE = Princess Elizabeth Land, SP = South Pole, PB = Pensacola Basin, DML = Dronning Maud Land, AP = Antarctic Peninsula, WA = West Antarctica, EA = East Antarctica, TA = Transantarctic Mountains, DF = Dome Fuji.

**Fig. 3**
The new Bedmap3 grounding line seeks to reconcile multiple varying observations. (a) A suite of published grounding lines and associated tidal flexure limits on the Northern Ice Shelf of Pine Island Glacier mapped by InSAR, ICESat, Cryosat2, MODIS and Landsat (Table 1) (background image: shaded relief of surface elevation after ref. ). Note that feature ‘A’ is no longer covered by the ice shelf; (b) a heatmap of grounding line location from multiple lines mapped by InSAR through 2018 (after ref. ); (c) the reconciled Bedmap3 masks of grounded ice, ‘transient grounding’, floating ice shelf and rock, gridded at 500 m. For comparison, M&B 2024 refers to pinning points identified in a separate study.

**Fig. 4**
The Bedmap3 survey dataset allows us to calibrate the more continuous and extensive freeboard-based ice shelf thickness grid. (a) Pointwise ice thickness biases between 119,000 survey measurements and the freeboard-derived ice thickness grid on the Ross Ice Shelf, showing coherent patterns of bias; (b) these pointwise offsets median-filtered over a 20 km radius; (c) spline-interpolated calibration grid of the filtered offsets in (b); (d) bias-corrected version of the freeboard-derived ice thickness grid after subtraction of the calibration grid in (c).

**Fig. 5**
(a) Synthetic ice thickness of unsurveyed areas in the Ellsworth mountains (within 15 km of rock or within 20 km of the coastline/grounding line). Thin grey lines show thickness surveys, the thick grey line shows the Bedmap3 grounding line, rock outcrops are shown in black. (b) scatterplot showing surveyed thickness (metres, x axis) plotted against calculated ‘Glen’ thicknesses (metres, y axis) and the linear regression line between the two (dashed black line).

**Fig. 6**
The depiction of subglacial troughs can be improved by identifying linear features common to multiple neighbouring survey lines. (a) A relatively dense grid of surveyed ice thickness (coloured lines) over the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountains overlain on digitised streamlines (white) that link points of local maximum thickness in neighbouring survey lines. Inset map shows the Antarctic-wide distribution of digitised streamlines in grey; (b) a grid interpolated using only surveyed thicknesses, where troughs appear ‘beaded’; (c) a grid interpolated using both surveyed thicknesses and thicknesses linearly interpolated along streamlines, resulting in smooth trough long profiles.

**Fig. 7**
Bedmap3 grids of (a) bed topography and (b) surface elevation, in metres above sea level (g104c geoid), and (c) ice thickness in metres. Locations labelled in (b) are referred to in the text.

**Fig. 8**
The Bedmap3 bed elevations can be compared to earlier products. (a) Bedmap3 minus Bedmap2; (b) Bedmap3 minus BedMachine v3 (red indicates that the Bedmap3 bed is higher, blue that it is lower).

**Fig. 9**
The Bedmap3 bed has some subjective advantages over BedMachine v3, including smoothly continuous grounding zones and troughs, and better-resolved areas of bed. (a) surface flow speed and Bedmap3 grounding line (solid black) in the Rutford Ice Stream area; (b) map of Bedmap3 minus BedMachine v3 bed topography; (c) BedMachine v3 bed topography; and (d) Bedmap3 bed topography, highlighting areas of difference. Similar BedMachine v3 issues have been reported previously in this area.

**Fig. 10**
Bedmap3 features smoothly continuous grounding zones and troughs, in contrast to some sites in BedMachine v3. (a) Surface flow speed and Bedmap3 grounding line (solid black) in the Wilma Glacier region; (b) BedMachine v3 bed topography; (c) Bedmap3 bed topography, both overlaid on shaded relief. The dotted line highlights troughs that are continuous in Bedmap3, white ovals highlight abrupt steps in the BedMachine v3 grounding zone.

**Fig. 11**
The BedMachine v3 bed has some subjective advantages over Bedmap3 where glacier flow is relatively fast, but survey data are sparse. (a) Surface flow speed; (b) BedMachine v3 bed topography; (c) Bedmap3 bed topography, both overlaid on shaded relief and with survey data shown as grey lines. The black dotted line highlights a trough under slow-flowing ice that is more smoothly continuous in Bedmap3. The white oval highlights the trough of a relatively fast-flowing ice stream that in BedMachine v3 is more smoothly streamlined and subjectively more realistic than in Bedmap3, given the typical streamlined form of deglaciated ice stream landscapes (e.g., ref. ). An objective test of bed accuracy in this area requires more survey data.

**Fig. 12**
Estimated 1-sigma uncertainty map for (a) ice thickness and (b) bed topography. Zero thickness uncertainty in (a) applies to rock areas.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica

Affiliations

Bedmap3 updated ice bed, surface and thickness gridded datasets for Antarctica

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Miscellaneous