2012 refrozen melt layer location, density, and connectivity records from airborne radar sounding, Greenland, 2017 ...

• Main Author: Culberg, Riley
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NSF Arctic Data Center 2021
• Subjects: Greenland; firn; radar sounding; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2736m33w; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/doi:10.18739/A2736M33W

Surface meltwater runoff dominates present-day mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. In the interior, porous firn can buffer runoff by retaining meltwater unless perched impermeable horizons, such as ice slabs, develop and restrict percolation. Recent field observations suggest that such horizons might develop rapidly during extreme melt seasons. In particular, subsurface refreezing of surface meltwater during the 2012 extreme melt season created a spatially coherent refrozen melt layer across the Greenland Ice Sheet. We use airborne radar sounding data collected by the University of Kansas Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) to map the extent of this layer and constrain its density and lateral connectivity at the radar footprint scale. These observations provide insights into the multi-year impact of extreme melt seasons on firn structure and meltwater drainage pathways. This data set contains detections of this melt layer from Accumulation Radar data collected by CReSIS in 2017. We use ...