Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the FISS 2016 surveys covering the Filchner and Halley Ice Shelves, and the English Coast (western Palmer Land), West Antarctica (2016/2017) - V2

Three separate airborne radar surveys were flown during the austral summer of 2016/17 over the Filchner Ice Shelf and Halley Ice Shelf (West Antarctica), and over the outlet glacier flows of the English Coast (western Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula) during the Filchner Ice Shelf System (FISS) project. This project was a NERC-funded (grant reference number: NE/L013770/1) collaborative initiative between the British Antarctic Survey, the National Oceanography Centre, the Met Office Hadley Centre, University College London, the University of Exeter, Oxford University, and the Alfred Wenger Institute 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.

The 2016/17 aerogeophysics surveys acquired a total of ~26,000 line km of aerogeophysical data. The FISS survey consisted of 17 survey flights totalling ~16,000 km of radar data over the Support Force, Recovery, Slessor, and Bailey ice streams of the Filchner Ice Shelf. The Halley Ice Shelf survey consisted of ~4,600 km spread over 5 flights and covering the area around the BAS Halley 6 station and the Brunt Ice Shelf. The English Coast survey consisted of ~5,000 km spread over 7 flights departing from the Sky Blu basecamp and linking several outlet glacier flows and the grounding line of the western Palmer Land, including the ENVISAT, CRYOSAT, GRACE, Landsat, Sentinel, ERS, Hall, Nikitin and Lidke ice streams.

Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, an iMAR strapdown gravity system, 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.

This is Version 2 of the dataset. This version differs from Version 1, as follows:

1. The variables "fast_time" has been updated due to errors found. The error in the variable related to an error in the sampling frequency of the system, which should have been 24 MHz instead of 22MHz. This has been updated.

2. The units in the "surface_pick_layerData" and the "bed_pick_layerData" variables should have been "samples relative to the BAS radar system", instead of "microseconds". This has been corrected.

3. The metadata in this DMS entry and in the NetCDF files has also been updated. Mainly, the sampling frequency has been modified from 22 MHz to 24 MHz to reflect the radar system characteristics. This also affected the value provided for the radar system resolution and sampling interval, which have both been updated in the metadata.

4. The SEGY sampling interval value (byte numbers: 117-118 (SI)) has also been updated to reflect the change in sampling frequency mentioned above.

All other variables remain unchanged. Note that these changes do not affect the radar data or the associated radar-derived data in the files.

Alternate title: Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01863

Date (Publication): 2024-07-05

Citation identifier: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01863

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre	Corr, H., Robinson, C., Jordan, T., Nicholls, K., Brisbourne, A., & Bodart, J.	pdc@bas.ac.uk	Originator

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Keywords

NDGO0001

NERC OAI Harvesting

NERC_DDC

GCMD Parameter Valids

EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets
EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Elevation/Ice Sheet Elevation
EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Thickness/Ice Sheet Thickness
EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Topography/Ice Sheet Topography
EARTH SCIENCE > Spectral/Engineering > Radar

BAS Free-text keywords

Aerogeophysics
Antarctica
ice thickness
radar
surface elevation

Use limitation: This data is covered by a UK Open Government Licence ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). Further by downloading this data the user acknowledges that they agree with the NERC data policy ( http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy.asp), and the following conditions:

1. To cite the data in any publication as follows:

Corr, H., Robinson, C., Jordan, T., Nicholls, K., Brisbourne, A., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the FISS 2016 surveys covering the Filchner and Halley Ice Shelves, and the English Coast (western Palmer Land), West Antarctica (2016/2017) - V2 (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/e203926b-7a54-4c33-a5df-04df2293d7d3

2. The user recognizes the limitations of data. Use of the data is at the users'' own risk, and there is no warranty as to the quality or accuracy of any data, or the fitness of the data for your intended use. The data are not necessarily fully quality assured and cannot be expected to be free from measurement uncertainty, systematic biases, or errors of interpretation or analysis, and may include inaccuracies in error margins quoted with the data.

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: This data is covered by a UK Open Government Licence ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). Further by downloading this data the user acknowledges that they agree with the NERC data policy ( http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy.asp), and the following conditions:

1. To cite the data in any publication as follows:

Corr, H., Robinson, C., Jordan, T., Nicholls, K., Brisbourne, A., & Bodart, J. (2024). Processed airborne radio-echo sounding data from the FISS 2016 surveys covering the Filchner and Halley Ice Shelves, and the English Coast (western Palmer Land), West Antarctica (2016/2017) - V2 (Version 2.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/e203926b-7a54-4c33-a5df-04df2293d7d3

2. The user recognizes the limitations of data. Use of the data is at the users'' own risk, and there is no warranty as to the quality or accuracy of any data, or the fitness of the data for your intended use. The data are not necessarily fully quality assured and cannot be expected to be free from measurement uncertainty, systematic biases, or errors of interpretation or analysis, and may include inaccuracies in error margins quoted with the data.

Language: English

Topic category

Elevation
Geoscientific information

Begin date: 2016-12-15

End date: 2017-01-22

Reference system identifier: OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326

Distribution format

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Polar Data Centre - British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
http		GET DATA

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification: INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Data Specification on unknown theme Guidelines

Date

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Statement: - Average spacing between radar traces: 11 m

- Line spacing: ~3.5-km (English Coast)

- Radar centre frequency: 150 MHz

- Radar bandwidth: 13 MHz

- Radar Receiver vertical sampling frequency: 24 MHz

- Absolute GPS positional accuracy: ~0.1 m (relative accuracy is one order of magnitude better). Banking angle was limited to 10 degrees during aircraft turns to avoid phase issues between GPS receiver and transmitter.

Note: The SEGY and bed pick files for the English Coast section of the FISS 2016/17 surveys can also be found at: https://doi.org/10.5285/e07d62bf-d58c-4187-a019-59be998939cc. However note that the SEGY data found there is not georeferenced. The datasets found here have been considerably curated and improved, and thus can be considered the latest and full dataset .