Project Description:

This project is in support of research that is investigating the spatio-temporal variations of refreezing in the firn of the Kangerlussuaq section of the Greenland ice sheet by the means of in-situ observations and remote sensing data. Specifically, this project is  exploring the possibilities of SAR in relating in-situ point observations (high temporal resolution) to extended areas (high spatial resolution) with the goal of retrieving firn estimates at high temporal resolution and over large spatial scales.

The project will focus on the 2016 melt season and will combine data from automatic weather stations with Sentinel-1 SAR data and DEM information from the Greenland Ice Mapping project. The approach will include (1) the pre-processing of all available Sentinel-1 SAR scenes;  (2) the extraction of the percolation zone from the data using SAR amplitude analysis; and (3) the comparison of the time evolution of the percolation zone through altitude bands with in-situ observations of air temperature and sub-surface temperature

Student Leading the Project:

Federico Covi, University of Alaska Fairbanks