High-Resolution Monitoring of Internal Layers Over the Greenland Ice Sheet

• Main Authors: Kanagaratnam Gogineni The, P. Kanagaratnam, S. P. Gogineni
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Greenland; Greenland ice core; Greenland Ice core Project; ice core; Ice Sheet; NGRIP; North Greenland; North Greenland Ice Core Project
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.10.9223; http://www.ittc.ku.edu/publications/documents/Kanagaratnam2000_IGARSS2000-2.pdf

The global sea level rise has been attributed to the melting of mountain glaciers among other causes. The mass balance of the glacial ice plays an important role in the rise of the Earth's sea level. A key variable in assessing the mass balance of an ice sheet is accumulation rate, which is currently determined from ice cores and pits. Accumulation data are sparse, and there are large uncertainties in existing accumulation rate maps derived from sparely distributed ice cores and pits. The accumulation rate can be estimated more accurately if we are able to obtain a continuous profile of the dated layers in the ice sheet. In this paper we describe the development of a high-resolution radar system to map the layers in the ice sheet and present the results obtained at the North GReenland Ice core Project (NGRIP) ice camp with our prototype system.