Characterizing Englacial and Subglacial Temperature Structure Using Airborne Radar Sounding

Abstract:

The temperature structure of ice sheet and glaciers is a fundamental control on ice flow, rheology, and stability. However, it is difficult to observationally constrain temperature structures at the catchment to ice-sheet scale. The englacial attenuation of radar sounding data is strongly dependent on the temperature structure of the ice sheets. Therefore, echo strength profiles from airborne radar sounding observation do contain temperature information. However, direct interpretation of englacial attenuation rates from radar sounding profiles is often difficult or impossible due to the ambiguous contribution the geometric and material properties of the bed to echo strength variations. To overcome this challenge, we presents techniques that treat radar sounding echo strength and ice thickness profiles as continuous signals, taking advantage of along-profile ice thickness and echo strength variations to constrain the spatial pattern of englacial attenuation and basal reflectivity. We then apply these techniques to an airborne radar sounding survey in order to characterize the englacial and subglacial temperature structure of the Thwaites Glacier catchment in West Antarctic. We then interpreted this structure in context of local ice sheet velocity, advection, force balance, and bed conditions using the ISSM ice sheet model.