Ground penetrating radar, snow accumulation and snow pit measurements at McMurdo Ice Shelf and in the catchment basin of Erebus glacier

Much of the research into the key components of the cryosphere is based on measurements of ice surface height, sea ice thickness, and snow morphology. A large amount of this information is derived from satellites.

In order to make this information reliable it is derived from algorithms developed and tested with robust ground truth data, which is reference data of physical snow and ice properties collected on the ground. The objective of this research is to obtain improved information of the polar cryosphere derived from remote sensing data, in particular from ESA’s Cryosat satellite. Cryosat, one of the European Space Agency’s Earth Explorer missions, will be launched in 2009.