Radar Sounder Data Analysis

Making creative use of radar sounding data to observe the physical processes of glaciers and ice sheets.

Ice penetrating radar 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. Despite the long tradition of glaciological interpretation of radar sounding profiles, quantitative analysis of ice penetrating radar data remains relatively rare. However, there is rich, often underexploited, information in radar sounding data. Our work in this area focuses on developing techniques to extract and exploit that information to constrain hard-to-observe geophysical processes. This includes the use of radar echo character, frequency dependence, full wave inversion, target-tuned processing, repeat-pass interferometry, and polarimetry in radar sounding. We are also developing time-series observations of subsurface conditions using stationary ground-based radars, repeat airborne surveys, and digitized archival radar film from the 1970s (www.radarfilm.studio). This combination of a growing body of data and a rapidly-developing literature, makes radar sounding a particularly exciting and rewarding area in which to work.