GPR for rapid and accurate snow-thickness measurements on Antarctic sea ice

• Main Authors: Lieser, J, Pfaffhuber, A, Haas, C
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: . 2018
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Physical geography and environmental geoscience; Physical geography and environmental geoscience not elsewhere classified; Antarctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://ecite.utas.edu.au/126032

Snow thickness on sea ice is not known on the regional scales and to the accuracy requiredfor climate analysis and to assess its significant role in the Earth's cryosphere mass balance.The thickness of snow on sea ice is a largely under-sampled, but crucially importantparameter when estimating sea-ice thickness from space-borne sensors. Traditionalsampling methods comprise meter-stick measurements or snow probes, which yield highlyaccurate data but are sparse in space and time, whereas remote sensing data have thepotential to cover large areas but exhibit large uncertainties. To increase the local datavolume and to apply as an intermediate level for remote-sensing data validation, we presentnon-destructive ground-penetrating radar (GPR) snow-thickness data of remarkableaccuracy (millimetre to centimetre) when compared to in-situ data. The semi-regional datacollected during two Antarctic campaigns in late winter/early spring confirm theunderestimation of snow thickness on sea ice using remote-sensing methods by roughly30%. The radar wave propagation was found to be rather constant in snow (+/- 6%),supporting the applicability of GPR for regional snow thickness surveys of snow thicker than10cm, which was the detection limit of the off-the-shelf GPR setup used in this study.