ice thickness
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This data set corresponds to data acquired by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) PASIN2 (Polarimetric Airborne Scientific INstrument, mark 2), designed for deep ice sounding and basal 3d-mapping. The data set includes the processed SAR images as depth profiles in the Recovery Ice Stream and Rutford Ice Stream, respectively downstream and upstream of the grounding line, and respectively for the 2016/17 FISS (Filchner Ice Shelf System) and the 2019/20 BEAMISH (Bed Access, Monitoring and Ice Sheet History) projects, both during the Antarctic Summer. With multiple antennas for transmission and reception at 150-MHz central frequency, and an across-track physical array, PASIN2 resolves the ambiguities for distinguishing between scatterers from port and starboard directions; however, in the two SAR images of the current dataset the port/starboard ambiguities are not resolved. On this dataset the user will be able to apply the RGB Doppler Decomposition method in the Doppler domain, interpret the results, and modify the different parameters and colours to contrast the results, all with the outcome of conducting new decompositions according to other datasets and needs. The RGB Spectral Decomposition is a generalised framework to interpret the SAR images: first, the Doppler or range spectral domains are first split into three sub-bandwidths; next, to each of the three a colour of a triplet of colours is assigned; and finally the three are superposed into one single image by the addition of the three colours. If the decomposition is applied on the Doppler spectrum, the new image contains the directional information related to the Doppler frequencies: positive frequencies when the radar approaches the target, near zero frequencies when the relative distance from radar to target is near stationary, and negative when the radar leaves it behind. If the backscattering is characterised by a very broad beamwidth the target will be gray/white, and if by a very narrow beamwidth then the target will be represented by one of the colours of the triplet. This work has received funding from the NERC grant NE/L013444/1, project: Ice shelves in a warming world: Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS), Antarctica. The 2016/17 data were collected as part of the NERC grant NE/L013770/1, project: Ice shelves in a warming world: Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS), Antarctica. The 2019/20 data were collected as part of the BAS National Capability contribution to the NERC/NSF International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) program.
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An airborne radar survey was flown over the Institute and Moller ice streams in the Weddell Sea sector of West Antarctica in the austral summer of 2010/11 as part of the Institute-Moller Antarctic Funding Initiative (IMAFI) project (grant reference number: NE/G013071/1). This project was a NERC Antarctic Funding Initiative (AFI) collaborative project between the British Antarctic Survey and the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Aberdeen and Exeter with the aim to test the hypothesis that the Institute and Moller ice streams are underlain by weak marine sediments which control the flow of the overlying ice. Operating from two static field camps close to the ice divide between the Institute and Moller ice streams and Patriot Hills, we collected ~25,000 km of airborne radio-echo sounding data across 28 survey lines. Our aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, a LaCoste and Romberg air-sea gravimeter, and an ice-sounding radar system (PASIN). 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.
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A new version of this dataset exists. Please have a look at: Corr, H., Robinson, C., Jordan, T., Nicholls, K., Brisbourne, A., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the FISS 2016 surveys covering the Filchner and Halley Ice Shelves, and the English Coast (western Palmer Land), West Antarctica (2016/2017) (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/e203926b-7a54-4c33-a5df-04df2293d7d3 Three separate airborne radar surveys were flown during the austral summer of 2016/17 over the Filchner Ice Shelf and Halley Ice Shelf (West Antarctica), and over the outlet glacier flows of the English Coast (western Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula) during the Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project. This project was a NERC-funded (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) collaborative initiative between the British Antarctic Survey, the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute to investigate how the Filchner Ice Shelf might respond to a warmer world, and what the impact of sea-level rise could be by the middle of this century. The 2016/17 aerogeophysics surveys acquired a total of ~26,000 line km of aerogeophysical data. The FISS survey consisted of 17 survey flights totalling ~16,000 km of radar data over the Support Force, Recovery, Slessor, and Bailey ice streams of the Filchner Ice Shelf. The Halley Ice Shelf survey consisted of ~4,600 km spread over 5 flights and covering the area around the BAS Halley 6 station and the Brunt Ice Shelf. The English Coast survey consisted of ~5,000 km spread over 7 flights departing from the Sky Blu basecamp and linking several outlet glacier flows and the grounding line of the western Palmer Land, including the ENVISAT, CRYOSAT, GRACE, Landsat, Sentinel, ERS, Hall, Nikitin and Lidke ice streams. Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, an iMAR strapdown gravity system, 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.
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A new version of thhis dataset exists. Please have a look at: Nicholls, K., Robinson, C., Corr, H., Jordan, T., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the FISS 2015 survey covering the Foundation Ice Stream, Bungenstock Ice Rise and the Filchner Ice Shelf system, West Antarctica (2015/2016) (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/ef482413-623b-4e71-a054-d394fc28ed54 An airborne radar survey was flown during the austral summer of 2015/16 over the Foundation Ice Stream, Bungenstock Ice Rise, and the Filchner ice shelf as part of the 5-year Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project. This project was a NERC-funded (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) collaborative initiative between the British Antarctic Survey, the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute to investigate how the Filchner Ice Shelf might respond to a warmer world, and what the impact of sea-level rise could be by the middle of this century. The 2015/16 aerogeophysics survey acquired ~7,000 line km of aerogeophysical data with a particular focus on the Foundation Ice Stream. Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, 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.
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This dataset contains bed and surface elevation picks derived from airborne radar collected in 2016/17 over the Filchner Ice Shelf and Halley Ice Shelf (West Antarctica) as part of the 5-year Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project funded by NERC (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) and awarded to the British Antarctic Survey with contribution from the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute. The aim of this project was to investigate how the Filchner Ice Shelf might respond to a warmer world, and what the impact of sea-level rise could be by the middle of this century. This collaborative initiative collected ~15,000 line-km of new aerogeophysical data using the 150MHz PASIN radar echo sounding system (Corr et al., 2007) deployed on a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Twin Otter. The majority of flights were flown as part of FISS over the Support Force, Recovery, Slessor, and Bailey ice streams. Separate flights over Halley 6 research station and Brunt Ice Shelf were also collected as part of this season. The bed and surface elevation picks for the English Coast part of this season are available at: https://doi.org/10.5285/e07d62bf-d58c-4187-a019-59be998939cc.
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This dataset contains bed and surface elevation picks derived from airborne radar collected in 2015/16 over Foundation Ice Stream and Filchner Ice Shelf as part of the 5-year Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project funded by NERC (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) and awarded to the British Antarctic Survey with contribution from the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute. The aim of this project was to investigate how the Filchner Ice Shelf might respond to a warmer world, and what the impact of sea-level rise could be by the middle of this century. This collaborative initiative collected ~7,000 line-km of new aerogeophysical data using the 150MHz PASIN radar echo sounding system (Corr et al., 2007) deployed on a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Twin Otter.
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We present here BEDMAP1 (2000-2001), a suite of gridded products describing surface elevation, ice-thickness and the sea floor and subglacial bed elevation of the Antarctic south of 60deg S. The suite includes grids representing: - ice-sheet thickness over the ice sheet and shelves, - bed elevation beneath the grounded ice sheet, - bathymetry to 60 degrees South including the areas beneath the ice shelves. These grids are consistent with a high-resolution surface elevation model of Antarctica. While the digital models have a nominal spatial resolution of 5 km, such high resolution is not strictly justified by the original data density over all parts of the ice sheet. The suite does however provide an unparalleled vision of the geosphere beneath the ice sheet and a more reliable basis for ice sheet modelling. The bed elevation DEM, which includes the entire geosphere south of 60 degrees South, provides an improved delineation of the boundary between East and West Antarctica and sheds new light on the morphology of the contiguous East Antarctic landmass, much of which is buried below an average of 2500 m of ice.
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During the austral summer of 2001/02 five thousand line kilometres of airborne radio echo sounding and aeromagnetic data were collected in the region of three tributaries of Slessor Glacier, East Antarctica, which drains into the Filchner Ice Shelf. We present here the processed bed elevation picks from airborne radar depth sounding acquired using the BAS aerogeophysicaly equipped Twin Otter aircraft. Data are provided as XYZ ASCII line data. Data were collected as part of UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant GR3/AFI2/65
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An airborne radar survey was flown as part of the seven nation Antarctica's Gamburtsev Province (AGAP) expedition over the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, Dome A, and the interior of East Antarctica during the International Polar Year 2007-2009. Operating from field camps located on either side of Dome A (namely AGAP-N and AGAP-S), we collected ~120,000 km (equivalent to 180,000 km2) of airborne survey data using two Twin Otter aircrafts - one from BAS and one from the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). The aircrafts were equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, laser ranging systems, magnetometers, gravity meters, and ice-sounding radars. We present here the full radar dataset from the BAS PASIN radar system 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.
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This data set corresponds to the processing of data acquired by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) PASIN2 (Polarimetric Airborne Scientific INstrument, mark 2), designed for deep ice sounding and basal 3D-mapping. The dataset includes the processed calibration data collected over the sea surface near Rothera Research Station during the Antarctic Summers campaigns in 2016/17 FISS (Filchner Ice Shelf System) and 2019/20 BEAMISH (Bed Access, Monitoring and Ice Sheet History) projects, and the processed SAR images as depth profiles in the Recovery Ice Stream near its grounding line, in 2016/17 (FISS). With multiple antennas for transmission and reception at 150-MHz central frequency, and an across-track physical array, PASIN2 resolves the ambiguities for distinguishing between scatterers from port and starboard directions. After processing several 2D SAR images (range and along-track dimensions) with transmitter-receiver pairs, the directional ambiguities are resolved, obtaining the across-track Direction of Arrival (DoA, elevation angle) estimation. Finally, from the 3D geometry of range, along-track and across-track angle, the real depths and across-track distances are estimated, regarding the case of the incorrectly assumed vertical DoA of a single SAR image. The calibration flights assessed and validated the instrument antenna patterns and processing performances. In this dataset, only the simulated and measured antenna patterns, and SAR and DoA images are included. By resolving directional ambiguities and accounting for reflector across-track location, the true ice thickness and bed elevation are obtained, thereby removing the error of the usual assumption of vertical DoA, that greatly influence the output of flow models of ice dynamics. This work was supported by NERC grant reference NE/L013444/1.
NERC Data Catalogue Service