Radar Glaciology

Radio echo sounding is a uniquely powerful geophysical technique for studying the interior of ice sheets, glaciers, and icy planetary bodies. It can provide broad coverage and deep penetration as well as interpretable ice thickness, basal topography, and englacial radio stratigraphy. However, despite the long tradition of glaciological interpretation of radar images, quantitative analyses of radar sounding data are rare and face several technical challenges. These include attenuation uncertainty from unknown ice temperature and chemistry, clutter and losses from surface and volume scattering, and a lack of problem-specific radar theory. However, there is rich, often underexploited, information in modern radar sounding data, which is being collected over terrestrial and planetary ice at an unprecedented rate. The development and application of hypothesis-driven analysis approaches and instrumentation can place observational constraints on the morphologic, hydrologic, geologic, mechanical, thermal, and oceanographic configurations of ice sheets, glaciers and the shell of icy moons. This talk will focus on the development of advanced ice penetrating radar sounders within the Stanford Radio Glaciology group. These include both active and passive airborne, towed (by skier or snow machine), stationary, drone, cube-sat, and planetary-flagship scale systems.

Speaker: Dustin Schroeder, Stanford