Liquid water content in ice estimated through a full-depth ground radar profile and borehole measurements in western Greenland

Brown, Joel; Harper, Joel; Humphrey, Neil

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-669-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-669-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-669-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

Research article

|

02 Mar 2017

Research article |

| 02 Mar 2017

Liquid water content in ice estimated through a full-depth ground radar profile and borehole measurements in western Greenland

Joel Brown, Joel Harper, and Neil Humphrey

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-669-2017-supplement

Data sets

Temperature distribution and thermal anomalies along a flowline of the Greenland ice sheet J. A. Harrington, N. F. Humphrey, and J. T. Harper https://doi.org/10.3189/2015AoG70A945

Model code and software

Raybased inversion code C. Zelt http://terra.rice.edu/department/faculty/zelt/rayinvr.html

Short summary

We use ground-penetrating radar surveys in conjunction with borehole depth and temperature data to estimate the liquid water content (wetness) of glacial ice in the ablation zone of an outlet glacier on the western side of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Our results show that the wetness of a warm basal ice layer is approximately 2.9 % to 4.6 % in our study region. This high level of wetness requires special attention when modelling ice dynamics or estimating ice thickness in the region.