Measuring Englacial Temperatures with a Combined Radar-Radiometer

Accurately measuring the vertical temperature profiles of ice sheets and glaciers can provide critical data for numerical ice sheet models used in global sea level projections. Ice-penetrating radars and radiometers have been utilized independently in remote sensing campaigns to measure englacial ice temperatures. Here we show that by combining these two instruments, which have complimentary sensitivities to lower and upper depths of the ice column, respectively, the overall uncertainty in temperature profile retrievals can be significantly reduced. We present unified simulations of radar attenuation and radiometer brightness temperature as functions of depth and frequency to demonstrate the value in this combined active/passive remote sensing approach.