Internal layer tracing and age‐depth‐accumulation relationships for the northern Greenland ice sheet

Abstract

Clues to previous ice sheet structure and long‐term glaciological processes are preserved in the internal layering configuration of the Greenland ice sheet. Information about these internal layers has been retrieved over many parts of the ice sheet with the University of Kansas ice‐penetrating radar. We report on the coherence of these layers over very large distances, describe a method of tracing these layers along thousands of kilometers of flight line, and do so for one flight during the 1999 Program for Arctic Regional Climate Assessment (PARCA) aircraft campaign. We determine the ages of these layers, based on information at the GRIP ice core site, and extend these ages along the flight line to Camp Century, where they are compared to modeled‐derived age estimates. These ages agree with each other to between 2 and 15%, differences that can be substantially reduced with minor changes to the model parameters (accumulation rate and shear layer depth). Finally, we are able to derive estimates of accumulation rates along the flight line by fitting the age‐depth data from layer tracing to a Dansgaard‐Johnsen model with a minimization technique, providing estimates that match recent accumulation patterns within a few centimeters per year.