COLDEX: Airborne VHF Radar Transects of Antarctic Ice Sheet, 2022-2023

2022-2023 airborne radar transects collected by the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX) between Antarctica's Dome A and Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. The data, from the MARFA radar system, are used for finding ice thickness, bed character, englacial structure, and surface assessment. The dataset was processed by the University of Kansas and is hosted by the Texas Data Repository.

Use Cases

• Mapping ice thickness and subglacial topography based on radar transect data.
• Analyzing englacial structure and layering for paleoclimate studies based on radargrams.
• Characterizing the ice bed (e.g., wet/dry, rough/smooth) for ice flow modeling based on radar returns.
• Planning future ice core drilling campaigns by identifying sites with old ice based on identified sites of interest.

Strengths

• Data collected over a significant spatial scale, with flights up to 800 km from South Pole Station.
• Includes ancillary data from instruments like a UHF array, gravity meter, magnetometer, laser altimeter, and GNSS receivers.
• Transects are systematically organized with a defined P/S/T nomenclature and preplanned flight parameters.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size for the processed dataset are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The raw 3 TB dataset is stored separately, requiring significant storage and processing capacity.

Provenance

Source

Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), University of Kansas, Texas Data Repository.

Collection Method

Airborne survey using the MARFA VHF radar system deployed on aircraft Balser C-FMKB.

Time Range

2022-2023 (CXA1 field season).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-27 04:40:20; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Antarctica, specifically between Dome A and Amundsen Scott South Pole Station.