Ground-Penetrating Radar Measurements of Antarctic Ice Sheet

This visualization presents data collected by the 2010 Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse (SEAT).

Accumulation, the amount of snow that falls on an ice sheet, is one of the most important inputs for determining the mass balance of an ice sheet. There are, however, relatively few direct accumulation measurements because the most precise measurements come from ice cores at a single point location.

Recently, new large-bandwidth, very-high frequency radars have been developed and used over the ice sheets to image internal layers in the near surface which represent about the past 30-40 years of accumulation. The SEAT traverses are making the link between near surface radar layers and ice cores by collecting both simultaneously across the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide region.