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IU Glaciology
Indiana University Bloomington
Ice-penetrating

Radar

Radar is a powerful tool for observing internal properties of the ice sheets and for understanding what lies beneath them. From this information, we can learn about how ice has flowed in the past, how it is flowing in the present, and how it is likely to change in the future.

Polarimetry

Much of our radar work focuses on polarimetry, which uses measurments at multiple angles to understand how properties of the ice vary.

A radargram, with wiggly layers on a gray background.
Radars let us see into and through ice.

Our group works with radars ranging in complexity from simple, commercial systems used in geotechnical applications to extremely expensive, cutting edge systems that require more complex processing and collaboration with electrical engineers. Our group has the primary maintainer of the ImpDAR processing package, which provides a free tool for scientists to process and interpret simple (impulse) radar data.

Inferring fabric

We also work on developing cutting-edge methods to obtain information about ice-crystal fabric from radar. Fabric is the collective orientation of ice crystals, so measuring at multiple angles allows us to infer fabric information from radar. David led a short summary of these methods for AGU's magazine Eos and helped with review of these methods.

Radar for ice cores

Historically, our group members have been involved with radar around ice core sites, both for site selection and to interpret the ice cores.

Future work

There are many additional ways to use radar to understand ice flow that the group may explore in the future. We are thinking about Greenland, Antarctica, and even the Martian polar layered deposits. Right now, PhD student Ankur Purao is spinning up polarimetry work, and undergraduate Mya Chaille is looking at fabric-induced beats in radar data.

Recent radar publications

  • Hills, Young, Lilien et al. (2025)
    Radar Polarimetry in Glaciology: Theory, Measurement Techniques, and Scientific Applications for Investigating the Anisotropy of Ice Masses
    Reviews of Geophysics, 63(4), e2024RG000842. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024RG000842
  • Gerber, Lilien et al. (2025)
    Anisotropic scattering in radio-echo sounding: insights from northeast Greenland
    The Cryosphere, 19(5), 1955–1971. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1955-2025
A square, blue radar antenna on an ice field, with a snow-covered mountain in the background. A radar antenna, blue and pink, being pulled behind a red snow cat over flat snow. A person in a heavy red coat looks at a laptop on an old wooden sled atop a flat, white ice sheet.
Using radars in the field.