Technology in the advancement of glaciology

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Many of the major advances in glaciology during the past 50 years have followed the development and application of new technology for viewing and measuring various characteristics of ice. Microscopes to study ice crystals, radars to probe the internal structure of large ice masses, mass spectrometers to analyze the atomic composition of ice cores, and satellite sensors to measure the global distribution of ice are some of the tools readily adapted by glaciologists. Today, new tools include microcomputers for automatic data logging, large-memory computers for data processing and numerical modeling, sensitive instruments for ice analysis, and satellite sensors for large-scale ice observations. In the future, continued advances in key technologies will help guide the evolution of science questions considered by glaciologists, expanding our view of ice, its fundamental properties, its interactions within the ice-ocean-land-atmosphere system, and its role in the evolution of our global environment.

Understanding ice-sheet mass balance: progress in satellite altimetry and gravimetry

“…The latter described early studies with visible data from a Landsat satellite, thermal imaging from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-7 (NOAA-7), passive microwave measurements from Nimbus-5, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from Seasat, photographs from Skylab and radar altimetry data from Geodetic and Earth Orbiting Satellite-3 (GEOS-3), Seasat and Geosat. These observations were used to map glacier margins, velocities, flowlines, facies, ice divides and ice- sheet topography (Zwally, 1987). With immature technology, a short archive of data and large, uncharted glacial landscapes, the first achievements were in mapping: creating inventories of ice and revealing patterns in surface features (e.g.…”

Impact of the International Glaciological Society on the development of glaciology and its future role

“…The Dane, Willy Dansgaard, the Swiss, Hans Oeschger, and the Frenchman, Claude Lorius, in particular, have had immense success in extracting very intriguing climatic information from the deep ice cores. Remote sensing, including radar sounding of ice thickness, is another area that has grown along with the Journal (see Jay Zwally's (1987) paper in this volume).…”