EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Elevation/Ice Sheet Elevation
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A digital elevation model of the bed of Rutford Ice Stream, Antarctica, derived from radio-echo sounding data. The data cover an 18 x 40 km area immediately upstream of the grounding line of the ice stream. This area is of particular interest because repeated seismic surveys have shown that rapid erosion and deposition of subglacial sediments has taken place. The bed topography shows a range of different subglacial landforms including mega-scale glacial lineations, drumlins and hummocks. This dataset will form a baseline survey which, when compared to future surveys, should reveal how active subglacial landscapes change over time. The dataset comprises observed ice thickness data, an interpolated bed elevation grid, observed surface elevation data and a surface elevation grid.
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A time series of the mean surface elevation along a transect across Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier from Feb 2012 to May 2018. Funding: Data were processed under NERC project CALISMO NE/P011365/1. Data were acquired under NERC project NE/I007148/1. Data were supplied by DLR.
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This data set corresponds to the processing of data acquired by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) PASIN2 (Polarimetric Airborne Scientific INstrument, mark 2), designed for deep ice sounding and basal 3D-mapping. The dataset includes the processed calibration data collected over the sea surface near Rothera Research Station during the Antarctic Summers campaigns in 2016/17 FISS (Filchner Ice Shelf System) and 2019/20 BEAMISH (Bed Access, Monitoring and Ice Sheet History) projects, and the processed SAR images as depth profiles in the Recovery Ice Stream near its grounding line, in 2016/17 (FISS). With multiple antennas for transmission and reception at 150-MHz central frequency, and an across-track physical array, PASIN2 resolves the ambiguities for distinguishing between scatterers from port and starboard directions. After processing several 2D SAR images (range and along-track dimensions) with transmitter-receiver pairs, the directional ambiguities are resolved, obtaining the across-track Direction of Arrival (DoA, elevation angle) estimation. Finally, from the 3D geometry of range, along-track and across-track angle, the real depths and across-track distances are estimated, regarding the case of the incorrectly assumed vertical DoA of a single SAR image. The calibration flights assessed and validated the instrument antenna patterns and processing performances. In this dataset, only the simulated and measured antenna patterns, and SAR and DoA images are included. By resolving directional ambiguities and accounting for reflector across-track location, the true ice thickness and bed elevation are obtained, thereby removing the error of the usual assumption of vertical DoA, that greatly influence the output of flow models of ice dynamics. This work was supported by NERC grant reference NE/L013444/1.
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This dataset consists of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of the surface elevation of Thwaites Glacier. The region covered includes the floating area of the fast-flowing main trunk of Thwaites Glacier, sometimes referred to as Thwaites West Ice Tongue. The DEMs are derived from TanDEM-X SAR data. There are 172 individual scenes that reveal the geometric evolution of this area between 2011 and 2022. This work was supported by the NERC project CALISMO NE/P011365/1.
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This dataset contains bed and surface elevation picks derived from airborne radar collected in 2016/17 over the Filchner Ice Shelf and Halley Ice Shelf (West Antarctica) as part of the 5-year Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project funded by NERC (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) and awarded to the British Antarctic Survey with contribution from the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute. The aim of this project was to investigate how the Filchner Ice Shelf might respond to a warmer world, and what the impact of sea-level rise could be by the middle of this century. This collaborative initiative collected ~15,000 line-km of new aerogeophysical data using the 150MHz PASIN radar echo sounding system (Corr et al., 2007) deployed on a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Twin Otter. The majority of flights were flown as part of FISS over the Support Force, Recovery, Slessor, and Bailey ice streams. Separate flights over Halley 6 research station and Brunt Ice Shelf were also collected as part of this season. The bed and surface elevation picks for the English Coast part of this season are available at: https://doi.org/10.5285/e07d62bf-d58c-4187-a019-59be998939cc.
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An airborne radar survey was flown as part of the GRADES-IMAGE project funded by BAS over the Antarctic Peninsula, Ellsworth Mountains and Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf (also including the Evans Ice stream and Carson Inlet) mainly to image englacial layers and bedrock topography during the 2006/07 field season. Operating from temporary field camps at Sky Blu, Partiot Hills and out of RABID depot (Rutford Ice Stream), we collected ~27,550 km of airborne radio-echo sounding data over 100 hours of surveying. Our aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, and an ice-sounding radar system (PASIN). Note that there was no gravimetric element to this survey. We present here the full radar dataset consisting of the deep-sounding chirp and shallow-sounding pulse-acquired data in their processed form, as well as the navigational information of each trace, the surface and bed elevation picks, ice thickness, and calculated absolute surface and bed elevations. This dataset comes primarily in the form of NetCDF and georeferenced SEGY files. To interactively engage with this newly-published dataset, we also created segmented quicklook PDF files of the radar data.
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This dataset contains glacier boundaries from 1975 to 2020 and elevation change data from 2000 to 2020 over the Cordilleras Vilcanota, Vilcabamba, and Urubamba, Peru. Glacier boundary data were analysed in Google Earth Engine from the Landsat archive and quantifies rate of change in ice extent over recent decades. Elevation change data were analysed in Google Earth Engine from the ASTER archive and quantifies change in ice thickness over decadal intervals from 2000 to 2020. Data are available as shapefiles (.shp) and GeoTIFFs (.tif). Summary data are available as CSVs (.csv). This work was funded by NERC SPHERES Doctoral Training Partnership (NE/L002574/1) and NERC Newton Fund (PEGASUS) (NE/S013318/1).
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During the austral summer of 2015/16, a major international collaboration funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and with in-kind contribution from the British Antarctic Survey, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF), acquired ~38,000 line km of aerogeophysical data. The primary objective of the POLARGAP campaign was to carry out an airborne gravity survey covering the southern polar gap of the ESA gravity field mission GOCE, beyond the coverage of the GOCE orbit (south of 83.5degS), however aeromagnetics and ice-penetrating radar data were also opportunistically acquired. This survey covers the South Pole and Recovery Lakes, as well as parts of the Support Force, Foundation and Recovery Glaciers. Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, an air-sea gravity meter, and a new ice-sounding radar system (PASIN-2). We present here the full radar dataset consisting of the deep-sounding chirp and shallow-sounding pulse-acquired data in their processed form, as well as the navigational information of each trace, the surface and bed elevation picks, ice thickness, and calculated absolute surface and bed elevations. This dataset comes primarily in the form of NetCDF and georeferenced SEGY files. To interactively engage with this newly-published dataset, we also created segmented quicklook PDF files of the radar data. NOTE: Please note that an issue with the floats in the NetCDF variable "UTC_time_layerData" has resulted in this variable having rounded up decimal numbers. In order to fix this issue, we advise users who need this variable to download the separately published bed pick data for the POLARGAP survey (doi: https://doi.org/10.5285/d55e87dd-a74d-4182-be99-93ab805103ab) and use the ''DateTime_YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM:SS.S'' column which is the same as the one used to produce the NetCDF.
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Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. An animated time series plot of 64 profiles of ice base and surface elevation along a flowline based on the mean flow direction. The flowline passes through a region of large elevation change that took place between 2014 and 2017. The work was funded by NERC projects NE/P011365/1 and NE/S006605/1
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We present here BEDMAP1 (2000-2001), a suite of gridded products describing surface elevation, ice-thickness and the sea floor and subglacial bed elevation of the Antarctic south of 60deg S. The suite includes grids representing: - ice-sheet thickness over the ice sheet and shelves, - bed elevation beneath the grounded ice sheet, - bathymetry to 60 degrees South including the areas beneath the ice shelves. These grids are consistent with a high-resolution surface elevation model of Antarctica. While the digital models have a nominal spatial resolution of 5 km, such high resolution is not strictly justified by the original data density over all parts of the ice sheet. The suite does however provide an unparalleled vision of the geosphere beneath the ice sheet and a more reliable basis for ice sheet modelling. The bed elevation DEM, which includes the entire geosphere south of 60 degrees South, provides an improved delineation of the boundary between East and West Antarctica and sheds new light on the morphology of the contiguous East Antarctic landmass, much of which is buried below an average of 2500 m of ice.