Mapping Greenland accumulation rates using observations of thermal emission at 4.5-cm wavelength ...
Accurate predictions of sea level rise over the coming century will require improved knowledge of the processes controlling accumulation on the great ice sheets. The sparsity of accumulation rate observations, both temporally and spatially, hinder development of this understanding. We introduce a ne...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
AGU
2001
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m2ixwx-mvpo https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/24313 |
| Summary: | Accurate predictions of sea level rise over the coming century will require improved knowledge of the processes controlling accumulation on the great ice sheets. The sparsity of accumulation rate observations, both temporally and spatially, hinder development of this understanding. We introduce a new method to observe accumulation rates (averaged over roughly a decade) using satellite observations of microwave emission at 4.5-cm wavelength, focusing in this paper on Greenland. At this wavelength, scattering by the grain fabric in firn is unimportant relative to quasi-reflection from density (and thus dielectric permittivity) stratification. We show observationally a strong link between random firn density stratification, on scales of millimeters to centimeters, and accumulation rate. We then show theoretically how the observed density stratification can produce and is consistent with observations of polarization of 4.5-cm-wavelength emission. We employ observations from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave ... |
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