Antarctic Ice Radargrams from the ICECAP Airborne Survey

Over 120 dB of dynamic range captures englacial layers and bedrock topography beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. These georeferenced radar echo measurements were collected by the ICECAP collaboration during the 2015/16 Antarctic field season, funded by the US National Science Foundation and other partners. Data are provided as NetCDF3 files containing time-registered instrument measurements converted to SI units.

Use Cases

• Reprocessing raw radar power measurements from the 4 Hz georeferenced echo data to correct for transmitter or receiver errors.
• Tracing englacial reflector geometry using the focused or unfocused SAR data included in the files.
• Analyzing basal conditions and bedrock topography from the recorded bed echo returns over the 64.74 μsec window.
• Investigating error sources like elevated background noise from surface scattering or RF interference noted in the metadata.

Strengths

• High dynamic range of 120 dB accommodates strong surface and weak bed echoes.
• Data includes both focused and unfocused SAR processing for enhanced englacial analysis.
• Precise acquisition parameters documented, including 52.5-67.5 MHz bandwidth and 6250 Hz Pulse Repetition Frequency.

Limitations

• Sample size and spatial coverage are unspecified, limiting assessment of representativeness.
• Level 1B data may contain power errors from instrument malfunctions or RF noise, requiring validation.
• Data is from a single field season (2015/16), offering a snapshot rather than temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

ICECAP (International Collaborative Exploration of the Cryosphere through Airborne Profiling) collaboration.

Collection Method

Airborne ice-penetrating radar surveys using a monostatic system with a 1-microsec FM chirp waveform.

Time Range

2015-2016 Antarctic field season.

Freshness

null

Geography

Dome C region, East Antarctic Ice Sheet.