Airborne radar bed elevation picks across the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, 2005-2006

• Main Authors: Ferraccioli, Fausto, Corr, Hugh, Jordan, Tom, Robinson, Carl, Armadillo, Egidio, Armadillo, Emanuele, Armadillo, Giorgio
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK 2018
• Subjects: "EARTH SCIENCE","CRYOSPHERE","GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS","GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATION"; "EARTH SCIENCE","TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE","GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS","GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATION"; "EARTH SCIENCE","SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING","RADAR"; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Austral; Victoria Land; George V Land; Wilkes Subglacial Basin; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/59e5a6f5-e67d-4a05-99af-30f656569401; https://data.bas.ac.uk/full-record.php?id=GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01075

This data set contains bed and surface elevation picks derived from airborne radar collected during the WISE/ISODYN project. This collaborative UK/Italian project collected ~ 61000 line km of new aerogeophysical data during the 2005/2006 austral summer, over the previously poorly surveyed Wilkes subglacial basin, Dome C, George V Land and Northern Victoria Land. : The standard deviation of the bed elevation for all crossover errors for the radar data is 33.3 m. However, this value is skewed by a few high error points in regions of more extreme topography. Over areas with smoother topography the standard deviation of the crossovers is ~10 m. Resolution: The line spacing for the main survey area is 8.8km, with tie lines 44 km apart. Additional regional lines explore specific targets. The along track sample spacing is 20 m. Radar data were collected using the PASIN radar echo sounding system (table 1 (Corr et al., 2007)). Data provided here includes picks and derived elevations of the ice sheet surface and bed. Bed reflections were picked from the radargram after unfocused synthetic aperture (SAR) processing. The bed reflector was picked in a semi-automated manner within the seismic processing package ProMax. An automatic first break picker was applied initially, with subsequent manual editing/removal of picks which appear unreasonable. The final sample spacing of the picked data is ~20 m. The surface elevation is derived from radar altimeter for ground clearance < 750 m, and the PASIN system for higher altitudes. The absolute position and altitude of the aircraft is derived from differentially processed GPS data. The final bedrock channel was created from the picked bed elevation, and surface elevation where flights crossed rock outcrops, as defined in the Antarctic Digital Database (http://www.add.scar.org/) Version 6, downloaded February 2014. A bedrock elevation channel including BEDMAP2 data (Fretwell et al., 2013), where there is no other information about ice sheet bed elevation, is also included. The details of the Lambert projection used are: Latitude of false origin: -74.018118 Longitude of false origin: 179 Latitude of 1st standard parallel: -72.66666666667 Latitude of 2nd standard parallel: -75.33333333333 False easting: 1444000 False northing: 1123000