A helicopter-borne radar system for Canadian glacier mass assessment

用于加拿大冰川质量评估的直升机机载雷达系统

• 批准号: RTI-2022-00069
• 负责人: Dow, Christine
• 金额: $ 10.87万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Research Tools and Instruments
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=741769
• 关键词: helicopter; borne; radar; system; Canadian

This project will fund the purchase of a custom-built helicopter radar system to image glacier ice up to 1km thick. Current mass estimates of Canadian glaciers are highly inaccurate due to widespread lack of ice thickness data, and modelling of glacier response to climate warming is significantly hindered by limited bed topography data. As such, our ability to predict sea-level contributions from Canadian glaciers, hazards from rapidly changing glaciers such as glacier lake outburst floods, downstream water resource availability, and the impact that changing glacier mass will have on Canadian mountain tourism, is limited. Current estimates of ice thickness and glacier bed topography have primarily been made using ground-based radar systems, which are towed on foot or by snowmachine and therefore limited in extent, highly time-consuming,  logistically expensive to obtain, and dangerous or impossible to operate in crevassed glacier regions. The proposed helicopter radar system will alleviate these problems, allowing for large-scale, safe data collection over ice masses in glacierized environments across Canada for the first time. This will facilitate the first accurate estimate of ice mass in the world's largest glaciated area outside of Greenland and Antarctica. A pilot helicopter radar system was tested in summer 2021 in the St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, with successful ice penetration depth up to 650m. The proposed system will build on this design with instrumentation to improve positioning accuracy, improved platform aerodynamics, better control and acquisition software, and radar developments to enable penetration of temperate (melting point) ice up to 1000m. The latter is necessary, as the sparse ground-based measurements suggest that most glaciers in the Yukon and Canadian High Arctic are considerably deeper than 650m. The primary research questions that will be addressed with data collected with the helicopter radar system are: 1) What is the mass of Canada's glaciers, on local, regional and national scales?; 2) What are the drivers of Canadian glacier flow rates in relation to subglacial topography and ice thickness?; 3) How will glacier mass and dynamics change in the future? High resolution helicopter radar surveys will be carried out in the first five years at major glaciers in the Yukon, Canadian High Arctic and British Columbia, where ice thickness data are currently lacking, to directly aid current funded research projects and provide crucial data for a wide variety of students supervised by team members. In the longer term (5-10 years), surveys will derive total glacial mass data for these three regions. The data gathered will benefit multiple collaborators, in addition to direct members of the project team, and provide globally important data required by organizations such as the World Glacier Monitoring Service (Switzerland), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

该项目将为购买定制的直升机雷达系统提供资金，以对冰期冰层的厚度为1公里。由于缺乏冰厚数据，加拿大冰川的当前质量估计值高度不准确，并且有限的床地形数据严重阻碍了冰川对气候变暖的冰川反应的建模。因此，我们预测加拿大冰川的海平面贡献的能力，速度变化的冰川（例如冰川湖爆发地板，下游水资源可用性）以及改变冰川质量对加拿大山区旅游的影响的危害是有限的。目前对冰厚度和冰川床地图的估计主要是使用地面雷达系统进行的，这些雷达系统是在步行或雪机上拖曳的，因此限制了在裂缝冰川地区的范围，高度耗时，逻辑上昂贵的，逻辑上昂贵的，并且危险或不可能运作。拟议的直升机雷达系统将减轻这些问题，从而首次在加拿大冰川环境中对冰块进行大规模的安全数据收集。这将有助于在格陵兰和南极洲以外的世界上最大的冰川区域中对冰块的第一个准确估计。 2021年夏季在育空地区的圣埃利亚斯山脉（St. Elias Mountains）测试了一个飞行员直升机雷达系统，其成功的冰渗透深度可达650m。拟议的系统将以仪器为基础，以提高定位准确性，改进的平台空气动力学，更好的控制和获取软件以及雷达开发，以使温度（熔点）冰的渗透率达到1000m高达1000m。后来是必要的，因为稀疏的地面测量结果表明，育空地区和加拿大高北极中的大多数冰川都比6.5亿多了。用直升机雷达系统收集的数据将解决的主要研究问题是：1）加拿大冰川的质量在地方，地区和国家规模上是什么？ 2）加拿大冰川流速与冰川亚地形和冰厚度有关的驱动因素是什么？ 3）将来冰川质量和动态将如何变化？高分辨率直升机雷达调查将在最初的五年内在育空，加拿大高北极和不列颠哥伦比亚省的主要冰川上进行，目前缺乏冰层厚度数据，直接帮助当前资助的研究项目，并为团队成员监督的各种学生提供重要的数据。从长远来看（5-10年），调查将为这三个区域提供总冰川质量数据。除了项目团队的直接成员之外，收集的数据还将使多个合作者受益，并提供全球重要的数据，例如世界冰川监测服务（瑞士）和气候变化政府间小组。