TY - JOUR
T1 - Decoding ice sheet behavior using englacial layer slopes
AU - Holschuh, Nicholas
AU - Parizek, Byron R.
AU - Alley, Richard B.
AU - Anandakrishnan, Sridhar
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the National Science Foundation and the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets for funding the PhD research of N. Holschuh through grants ANT-0424589 (R.B.A, S.A., and B.R.P.), DGHZ55832 (N.H.), PLR-1443190 (B.R.P.), AGS-1338832 (B.R.P., R.B.A., and S.A.) and the support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through grant NNX15AH84G (B.R.P.). We would like to thank Knut Christianson, as well as the rest of the WISSARD team for providing radar data from the Whillans Grounding Zone. We would also like to thank M. Wolovick and one anonymous reviewer, whose contributions during review lead to a substantial improvement of the work. Data from the Whillans Grounding Zone are accessible through the University of Washington's ResearchWorks Archive (http://hdl.handle.net/1773/38508). Airborne campaign data can be found through the Operation IceBridge portal. Matlab formulations of the slope extraction algorithm can be provided by the corresponding author by request.
Publisher Copyright:
©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2017/6/16
Y1 - 2017/6/16
N2 - The complex flow fields of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets deform layers deposited as snow at the ice sheet surface, leaving a record of the regional flow history and/or local transitions in basal boundary conditions within the geometry of ice sheet layers. Ice-penetrating radar reveals these layers, but radar data interpretations are limited by the challenges of quantitatively and reproducibly comparing observations with model output. We present a conceptual framework that relates along-track reflector slope to gradients in the steady state velocity field of ice sheets. This method makes effective use of englacial reflectors in regions where it is challenging to image continuous layers and avoids the error propagation inherent to tracer-transport methods, developing the potential for formal radar data assimilation in future modeling studies. We apply our method to radar data collected at the grounding line of Whillans Ice Stream, where enhanced bed friction produces characteristic reflector slopes reproducible using a higher-order ice flow model.
AB - The complex flow fields of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets deform layers deposited as snow at the ice sheet surface, leaving a record of the regional flow history and/or local transitions in basal boundary conditions within the geometry of ice sheet layers. Ice-penetrating radar reveals these layers, but radar data interpretations are limited by the challenges of quantitatively and reproducibly comparing observations with model output. We present a conceptual framework that relates along-track reflector slope to gradients in the steady state velocity field of ice sheets. This method makes effective use of englacial reflectors in regions where it is challenging to image continuous layers and avoids the error propagation inherent to tracer-transport methods, developing the potential for formal radar data assimilation in future modeling studies. We apply our method to radar data collected at the grounding line of Whillans Ice Stream, where enhanced bed friction produces characteristic reflector slopes reproducible using a higher-order ice flow model.
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U2 - 10.1002/2017GL073417
DO - 10.1002/2017GL073417
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020081905
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 44
SP - 5561
EP - 5570
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 11
ER -