CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Radar

Hidden beneath the surface – what can we learn from an ice sheet’s internal stratigraphy?

October 28, 2022
Hidden beneath the surface – what can we learn from an ice sheet’s internal stratigraphy?
The ski-equipped Polar-6 Basler aircraft from the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI) flying an ice-penetrating radar from Rothera research base. The radar antennas are visible under the wings. Photo credit: Michael Fischer, AWI.

Hidden beneath the surface of ice sheets lies an intricate structure carrying a unique fingerprint of past ice flow and climate conditions. Disentangling the drivers of an ice sheet’s enigmatic stratigraphy could theoretically unravel the ice sheet’s past evolution and provide a much clearer picture of things to come in the future. One way to detect this mysterious stratigraphy is to use ice-penet ...[Read More]

phase-sensitive Radio Echo Sounder, a.k.a. pRES, For Dummies

September 30, 2022
phase-sensitive Radio Echo Sounder, a.k.a. pRES, For Dummies
Figure 1. pRES with four antennas mounted behind an autonomous ice rover to collect polarimetric radar data over the Ekström ice shelf - Antarctica (ReMeltRadar2021-22). Photo credit: Reza Ershadi.

Greetings! My name is Reza. I’m (still) A PhD candidate in Geophysics and Glaciology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Today, I will tell you all about a device named pRES, a radar system designed to study ice. Well, pRES and I have had an immense love/hate relationship during the last four years. It is one of the main tools I have used during my PhD, working in the Alps and Antarctica. I ...[Read More]

Will the ice break out? – a story from the farthest north ice trails

November 26, 2021
Man on snow machine looks bake to the canoe he is towing across ice.
A family traveling up the coast with a traditional Umiaq skin boat on an ice trail only days before the ice broke out in 2014. Photo: Dyre Dammann

"For over two decades, the sea ice group at the University of Alaska has worked with the community of Utqiaġvik, establishing an integrated observing network. This network includes local observations, a coastal radar system to monitor ice conditions, an in-situ mass balance site monitoring environmental change such as ice growth and snow cover, and the mapping of community sea ice trails." In thi ...[Read More]

The softness of ice, how we measure it, and why it matters for sea level rise

June 25, 2021
The softness of ice, how we measure it, and why it matters for sea level rise
Figure: The Scott Polar Research Institute’s beautiful fabric maps show that Antarctica is composed of the combination of many different aspects, including snow, rocks, volcanoes, and biological life. Although the fabric of ice does not refer to material textiles, the analogy is similar in that ice fabric represents the physical composite of all its constituent ice crystals. [Image credit: Derek Langley / Naomi Chapman (SPRI University of Cambridge)]

One of the first things school children learn is that ice is a solid, and forms by freezing water. Most people think of ice as brittle–have you ever dropped a slippery ice cube on the kitchen floor, and watch it break and shatter into many pieces? It may be surprising, then, to find that ice can also stretch and squeeze, like a ball of pizza dough! Once deformed, ice is then softer in certai ...[Read More]

©LEt’sGO to Antarctica !

May 15, 2020
©LEt’sGO to Antarctica !
The camp site deployed to collect radar data with (a) the polar vehicle (in orange in the centre) or (b) snowmobiles (on the right). Other types of measurements are often carried out simultaneously: atmospheric gas composition, snow/ice core drilling, surface photogrammetry, etc. Can you spot them all ? Photo credit: Brice Van Liefferinge

With the current situation, polar fieldwork might be/have been cancelled and we have a suggestion to remedy your field-blues… Why not use ©LEGO to pretend you’re back in the field with the added bonus that you get to be in the warmth and comfort of your home! Here, we’ve re-enacted radar fieldwork that took place a year and a half ago in Antarctica… But first, let’s start with some backgroun ...[Read More]

Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!

November 8, 2017
Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!
Figure 1: A68 sets sail from Larsen C.
Sentinel 1 SAR image [Credit: Adrian Luckman, Swansea University].

Much of the Antarctic continent is fringed by ice shelves. An ice shelf is the floating extension of a terrestrial ice mass and, as such, is an important ‘middleman’ that regulates the delivery of ice from land into the ocean: for much of Antarctica, ice that passes from land into the sea does so via ice shelves. I’ve been conducting geophysical experiments on ice for over a decade, using mostly s ...[Read More]

Image of Week: Inside the Greenland Ice Sheet

October 23, 2015
Image of Week: Inside the Greenland Ice Sheet
Cross-section of the age of the Greenland Ice Sheet from radar data. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and MacGregor et al., 2015.

The image shows a cross section of the Greenland Ice Sheet, where a recent study by MacGregor et al. have mapped the layers imaged by radar. Thanks to ice core measurements the age of the layers have been determined, and in the image the layers from the Holocene period (the past 11.700 years) are shown in green. The ice formed during the last ice age, that spanned 11.700 to 115.000 years ago are c ...[Read More]

My first journey to Antarctica – Brice Van Liefferinge

May 8, 2015
My first journey to Antarctica – Brice Van Liefferinge
(Credit B. Van Liefferinge)

19 November 2014, the Iliuchine 76 gently lands on the runway of the Russian Antarctic station, Novolazarevskaya, in Dronning Maud Land. For the first time, I’m in Antarctica! It is 4 o’clock in the morning and we need to hurriedly offload 2 tons of material intended for our field mission near the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station. I’m deeply impressed by the landscape although it is dotted with ...[Read More]

Glaciers on Mars

April 7, 2015
Glaciers on Mars
Image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera shows that the glaciers are covered by a layer of dust (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin).

“I did not know that there is water on Mars!” This a sentence I hear surprisingly often when I talk about glaciers on Mars. In fact, it has been known for some time that water exists in the form of ice and water vapour on the planet. For example, water ice layers several kilometres thick cover the Martian poles, and the ground close to the Polar Regions has permafrost patterns very similar to what ...[Read More]