Wideband Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging of Sub-Surface Interfaces in Glacial Ice

Inhalt:
Determination of basal conditions is a key to understanding the rapid changes being observed in parts of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Traditional radar depth sounders are not suitable for unambiguous determination of basal conditions. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that can provide fine resolution both in the cross- and along-track directions is an ideal tool for characterizing ice-bed interface. We developed a wideband Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to image the ice-bed interface and conducted field experiments at Summit, Greenland. The results from these experiments showed, for the first time, that we can image the ice-bed interface through ice more than 3-km thick. In this paper we provide a brief description of the system, summarize the field experiments, and show some sample results