NERC Data Catalogue Service
Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the POLARGAP survey covering the South Pole, and Foundation and Recovery Glaciers, East Antarctica (2015/2016) - VERSION 2
During the austral summer of 2015/16, a major international collaboration funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and with in-kind contribution from the British Antarctic Survey, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF), acquired ~38,000 line km of aerogeophysical data. The primary objective of the POLARGAP campaign was to carry out an airborne gravity survey covering the southern polar gap of the ESA gravity field mission GOCE, beyond the coverage of the GOCE orbit (south of 83.5degS), however aeromagnetics and ice-penetrating radar data were also opportunistically acquired. This survey covers the South Pole and Recovery Lakes, as well as parts of the Support Force, Foundation and Recovery Glaciers.
Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, an air-sea gravity meter, and a new ice-sounding radar system (PASIN-2).
We present here the full radar dataset consisting of the deep-sounding chirp and shallow-sounding pulse-acquired data in their processed form, as well as the navigational information of each trace, the surface and bed elevation picks, ice thickness, and calculated absolute surface and bed elevations. This dataset comes primarily in the form of NetCDF and georeferenced SEGY files. To interactively engage with this newly-published dataset, we also created segmented quicklook PDF files of the radar data.
This is Version 2 of the dataset. This version differs from Version 1, as follows:
1. The variables "fast_time" and "UTC_time_layerData" have been updated due to errors found. The error in the fast_time variable related to an error in the sampling frequency of the system, which should have been 24 MHz instead of 22MHz. This has been updated. The error in the "UTC_time_layerData" related to a rounding issue which affected the precision of this variable. This has been updated.
2. The units in the "surface_pick_layerData" and the "bed_pick_layerData" variables should have been "samples relative to the BAS radar system", instead of "microseconds". This has been corrected.
3. The metadata in this DMS entry and in the NetCDF files has also been updated. Mainly, the sampling frequency has been modified from 22 MHz to 24 MHz to reflect the radar system characteristics. This also affected the value provided for the radar system resolution and sampling interval, which have both been updated in the metadata.
4. The SEGY sampling interval value (byte numbers: 117-118 (SI)) has also been updated to reflect the change in sampling frequency mentioned above.
All other variables remain unchanged. Note that these changes do not affect the radar data or the associated radar-derived data in the files.
Simple
- Alternate title
- Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01865
- Date (Publication)
- 2024-09-09
- Identifier
- http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01865
- 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
- EARTH SCIENCE > Spectral/Engineering > Radar
- BAS Free-text keywords
-
- Antarctic
- aerogeophysics
- ice thickness
- radar
- surface elevation
- Use limitation
-
This data is covered by a UK Open Government Licence (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). 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 in any publication as follows:
Ferraccioli, F., Forsberg, R., Matsuoka, K., Olesen, A., Jordan, T., Corr, H., Robinson, C., Kohler, J., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the POLARGAP survey covering the South Pole, and Foundation and Recovery Glaciers, East Antarctica (2015/2016) (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/6be0a803-78d4-4ca9-be02-3838866763c3
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 UK Open Government Licence (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). 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 in any publication as follows:
Ferraccioli, F., Forsberg, R., Matsuoka, K., Olesen, A., Jordan, T., Corr, H., Robinson, C., Kohler, J., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the POLARGAP survey covering the South Pole, and Foundation and Recovery Glaciers, East Antarctica (2015/2016) (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/6be0a803-78d4-4ca9-be02-3838866763c3
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.
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Elevation
- Geoscientific information
))
- Begin date
- 2015-12-07
- End date
- 2016-01-19
- Reference system identifier
- OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
- Distribution format
-
- OnLine resource
- GET DATA ( http )
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
Domain consistency
- Measure identification
- INSPIRE / Conformity_001
Conformance result
- Date
- Explanation
- See the referenced specification
- Pass
- No
- Statement
-
- Trace spacing (post-processed data): ~30 m
- Vertical resolution: ~7 m
- Radar centre frequency: 150 MHz
- Radar bandwidth: 13 MHz
- Radar Receiver vertical sampling frequency: 24 MHz
- Absolute GPS positional accuracy: ~0.1 m (relative accuracy is one order of magnitude better). Banking angle was limited to 10 degrees during aircraft turns to avoid phase issues between GPS receiver and transmitter.
Crossover analysis of recovered bed elevation across the entire survey gives an error estimate for the PolarGAP survey of ~28 m.
- File identifier
- GB_NERC_BAS_PDC_01865 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2024-09-09
- Metadata standard name
- NERC profile of ISO19115:2003
- Metadata standard version
- 1.0
Overviews
Spatial extent
Provided by
