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Bed, surface elevation and ice thickness measurements derived from radar data acquired during the Thwaites Glacier airborne survey (2019/2020)

As part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) 4432 km of new radar depth sounding data was acquired over the Thwaites Glacier catchment by the British Antarctic Survey. Data was collected using the PASIN polametric radar system, fitted on the BAS aerogeophysical equipped survey aircraft VP-FBL. The survey operated from Lower Thwaites Glacier camp, and focused on collecting data in regions of ice >1.5 km thick between 70 and 180 km from the grounding line.

ITGC is committed to addressing issues of equity, diversity and inclusion within the ITGC program and beyond, into the broader cryospheric community. Although equity and diversity measures were not part of our programme's original scope, members of ITGC formed a committee of representatives from each of our nine projects and include a diversity of people in career stage, gender identity, and a mix among people from the UK, US and beyond.
Photo of James Wake
Thwaites Field Coordinator
UK Logistics
Affiliation
BAS: British Antarctic Survey
Email
jake@bas.ac.uk
James is the Thwaites Field Coordinator for BAS, working closely with USAP to support the field component of ITGC.
Photo of Chris Kratt
Department
Center for Transformative Environmental Monitoring Programs (CTEMPs)
Laboratory Coordinator
Affiliation
University of Nevada, Reno
Project
TARSAN

Chris Kratt is the Laboratory Coordinator for the Center for Transformative Environmental Monitoring Programs (CTEMPs) at the University of Nevada, Reno. He provides technical and logistical support to Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) and Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) research projects. He has a Masters degree in geology and co-instructs an undergraduate Applied Geophysics class. Mr. Kratt also has private sector experience conducting a variety of geophysical surveys.

Study published in Science sheds light on the future of the massive Thwaites Glacier and other ice sheets.
Scott Tyler of University of Nevada, Reno
Department
Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering
Foundation Professor
Affiliation
University of Nevada, Reno
Email
styler@unr.edu
Project
TARSAN

Scott Tyler is a Foundation Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno and director of the CTEMPs Community User Facility focusing on the development and application of fiber-optic based sensing for environmental temperature and strain. His research spans the atmospheric boundary layer, through the soil and has included deep groundwater circulation. He is currently serving as past president of the AGU’s Hydrology Section.

With training in mechanical engineering and hydrogeology, his recent work focuses on the measurement of the dynamics and thermal evolution of Antarctic ice shelves and the ocean waters below. As part of the TARSAN project, he has helped developed the fiber-optic moorings of the AMIGOS weather stations and is developing a distributed acoustic monitoring system for both ice shelf and the ocean below for testing at Thwaites in 2021/2022.

Dave Wattam of BAS
Operations Programme Manager
UK Logistics
Affiliation
BAS: British Antarctic Survey
Email
dwat@bas.ac.uk

Dave joined British Antarctic Survey in 2001 and is currently the Operations Programme Manager. He is responsible for the planning and delivery of the global annual programme to Antarctica, including that for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, translating scientific requirements for logistics support in to operational delivery.

Writer Douglas Fox accompanied ITGC researchers into the field in 2019/2020, where he witnessed TARSAN scientists Erin Pettit, Ted Scambos, MELT scientist Britney Schmidt, and others drill into the Thwaites Glacier ice shelf to learn about the shelf's properties and its thickness. What surprised the team the most was the vast amount of life under the shelf. 

Read the article here.

The ‘Cliff Notes’ on ice-cliff failure

The retreat of large glaciers that drain the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could expose immense ice-cliffs at newly-bared calving faces, which are the exposed ends of glaciers where, in these cases, glacier ice meets the ocean. Past a certain height, these ice cliffs will become susceptible to collapsing from high stresses, a process known as structural ice-cliff failure. Read more in this blog post that describes recent research published in Nature Communications.
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