the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 04 Dec 2025
Review article: 30 years of airborne radar surveys on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets by the Alfred Wegener Institute
Abstract. The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), has conducted airborne radar campaigns since 1994 across Antarctica and Greenland, utilizing six different radar systems to study ice sheets and their interactions with climate, ocean and the solid Earth. In this review article, we describe AWI's airborne radar systems and their deployments over the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet. Moreover, we summarize application and usage of AWI radar systems, which provided crucial insights into e.g., ice dynamics, mass balance, and ancient landscapes buried beneath the ice. The integration of radar data with other geophysical methods has enhanced bathymetric models, improving predictions of ice–ocean interactions and ice-shelf stability and contributed to a better understanding of crustal and geological evolution of the Antarctic continent. To support scientific progress, AWI made its airborne radar data publicly accessible through the Radar Data over Polar Ice Sheets viewer hosted by the Marine Data Portal (https://marine-data.de/viewers/) and PANGAEA (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.972094), ensuring compliance with FAIR principles. Future research will expand on these contributions, focusing on refining ice-sheet models and exploring new areas of glaciological and geological interest.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of The Cryosphere. The peer-review process was guided by an independent editor, and the authors also have no other competing interests to declare.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.-
Notice on discussion status
The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
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Preprint
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
- Preprint
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- Final revised paper
Journal article(s) based on this preprint
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5328', Rene Forsberg, 04 Jan 2026
This paper is a thorough summary of all of AWI's radar data, collected in Greenland and Antarctica for more than three decades. The technical parts summarizing the radar developments from the 1990's through to today give an excellent and informative overview of the developments over the years, including useful summaries of the various aircraft and antennas flown, and useful track plots for the yearly campaigns. This kind of overview has not been easy to find anywhere, and with the complete data set now being published openly following FAIR principles it is now much easier for researchers to locate data for potentially new scientific studies. Such new studies, especially in the densely covered Dronning Maud Land and NE Greenland region, could also represent a good future dividend of the huge expenditures AWI, and thus the German taxpayers, must have had over the many years in support of polar science and the campaigns.
The science content in the submitted paper is not new, in the sense that the summary of science results over the three decades have essentially all been published elsewhere. But the long list of papers in the references, many known, many not so known, by the broader polar radar and EO community are very useful, not least new for ph.d.'s and post.docs.
I therefore recommend strongly this paper be published, this will be a useful reference for present and future science, and complement nicely similar data summaries from other groups/agencies with extensive radar collections, such as NASA/IceBridge and the British Antarctic Survey. It also acts as an inspiration for other research groups to make sure their radar data - historical or recent - are described and made available in a timely fashion, to the benefit of all scientists involved in the studies of the icesheets. And also a good document as acknowledgement of the large amount of logistics support provided by other national programs in Antarctica, as well as other agencies (and Danish military) in Greenland.
The text itself seems carefully checked, and I found only very few misprints (e.g. on p. 46, "Station Nord logical support ..."). Given the German-heavy presentations and science results, an acknowledgement could be in place to augment the statement "pilots and mechanics from different contractors over time" (p. 4)", with a direct mentioning of the Kenn Borek Aviation crews of Polar 5 and 6, all succesful polar campaigns is typically a function of both science, logistics, and especially experience air crews.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5328-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
We are very grateful to René Forsberg for his time and the exceptionally positive review and support of our review article. Such encouragement is greatly appreciated.
We corrected the typo on Page 46 and now specifically mention Kenn Borek Air.
Best wishes,
Steven FrankeCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5328-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5328', Julien Bodart, 19 Jan 2026
Dear Editor and Authors,
Please find attached my review of Franke et al. (manuscript number: 2025-5328) with manuscript title “Review article: 30 years of airborne radar surveys on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets by the Alfred Wegener Institute”.
This review paper and its associated data release is a great achievement for the polar radar community, and for AWI specifically who have done a lot of work to make 30 years of radar data across both the Arctic and Antarctica available to the wider scientific community. The data is fully available in open-access format, follows FAIR data principles, and is efficiently accessible through the new Radar Data over Polar Ice Sheets data viewer. Of equal importance, this review paper is very well written, the figures and tables are clear, and the text forms a great resource for current and future scientists wishing to interact with the AWI data and the science that came from it.Together, there are now three large data providers (CRESIS, BAS and now AWI) that have released most of their aerogeophysical data over Antarctica and the Arctic in freely accessible formats. The repercussions that these data releases have on polar science cannot be understated, and I look forward to seeing other institutes follow through in future years with their own data release.
I have several minor comments regarding the text, figures or tables (see associated file), but as a whole, I would recommend this paper to be published in The Cryosphere with minor revision. I very much look forward to seeing the updated version soon online.
With best wishes,
Julien Bodart
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5328', Rene Forsberg, 04 Jan 2026
This paper is a thorough summary of all of AWI's radar data, collected in Greenland and Antarctica for more than three decades. The technical parts summarizing the radar developments from the 1990's through to today give an excellent and informative overview of the developments over the years, including useful summaries of the various aircraft and antennas flown, and useful track plots for the yearly campaigns. This kind of overview has not been easy to find anywhere, and with the complete data set now being published openly following FAIR principles it is now much easier for researchers to locate data for potentially new scientific studies. Such new studies, especially in the densely covered Dronning Maud Land and NE Greenland region, could also represent a good future dividend of the huge expenditures AWI, and thus the German taxpayers, must have had over the many years in support of polar science and the campaigns.
The science content in the submitted paper is not new, in the sense that the summary of science results over the three decades have essentially all been published elsewhere. But the long list of papers in the references, many known, many not so known, by the broader polar radar and EO community are very useful, not least new for ph.d.'s and post.docs.
I therefore recommend strongly this paper be published, this will be a useful reference for present and future science, and complement nicely similar data summaries from other groups/agencies with extensive radar collections, such as NASA/IceBridge and the British Antarctic Survey. It also acts as an inspiration for other research groups to make sure their radar data - historical or recent - are described and made available in a timely fashion, to the benefit of all scientists involved in the studies of the icesheets. And also a good document as acknowledgement of the large amount of logistics support provided by other national programs in Antarctica, as well as other agencies (and Danish military) in Greenland.
The text itself seems carefully checked, and I found only very few misprints (e.g. on p. 46, "Station Nord logical support ..."). Given the German-heavy presentations and science results, an acknowledgement could be in place to augment the statement "pilots and mechanics from different contractors over time" (p. 4)", with a direct mentioning of the Kenn Borek Aviation crews of Polar 5 and 6, all succesful polar campaigns is typically a function of both science, logistics, and especially experience air crews.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5328-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
We are very grateful to René Forsberg for his time and the exceptionally positive review and support of our review article. Such encouragement is greatly appreciated.
We corrected the typo on Page 46 and now specifically mention Kenn Borek Air.
Best wishes,
Steven FrankeCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5328-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5328', Julien Bodart, 19 Jan 2026
Dear Editor and Authors,
Please find attached my review of Franke et al. (manuscript number: 2025-5328) with manuscript title “Review article: 30 years of airborne radar surveys on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets by the Alfred Wegener Institute”.
This review paper and its associated data release is a great achievement for the polar radar community, and for AWI specifically who have done a lot of work to make 30 years of radar data across both the Arctic and Antarctica available to the wider scientific community. The data is fully available in open-access format, follows FAIR data principles, and is efficiently accessible through the new Radar Data over Polar Ice Sheets data viewer. Of equal importance, this review paper is very well written, the figures and tables are clear, and the text forms a great resource for current and future scientists wishing to interact with the AWI data and the science that came from it.Together, there are now three large data providers (CRESIS, BAS and now AWI) that have released most of their aerogeophysical data over Antarctica and the Arctic in freely accessible formats. The repercussions that these data releases have on polar science cannot be understated, and I look forward to seeing other institutes follow through in future years with their own data release.
I have several minor comments regarding the text, figures or tables (see associated file), but as a whole, I would recommend this paper to be published in The Cryosphere with minor revision. I very much look forward to seeing the updated version soon online.
With best wishes,
Julien Bodart
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Steven Franke, 10 Mar 2026
Peer review completion
Journal article(s) based on this preprint
Data sets
Collection of datasets from AWI's radio-echo sounding systems on ice sheets and glaciers [dataset bibliography] O. Eisen et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.972094
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Cited
1 citations as recorded by crossref.
Steven Franke
Daniel Steinhage
Veit Helm
Tobias Binder
Uwe Nixdorf
Heinrich Miller
Angelika Humbert
Daniela Jansen
Graeme Eagles
Hannes Eisermann
Wilfried Jokat
Antonia Ruppel
Reinhard Drews
Alexandra Zuhr
Amelie Driemel
Andreas Walter
Peter Konopatzky
Robin Heß
Antonie Haas
Roland Koppe
Pascal H. Andreas
The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
- Preprint
(11372 KB) - Metadata XML