IceBridge Land Ice Flight Planning Telecon
January 13, 2011
Participants: Jezek, Young, Luthcke, Koenig, Joughin, Smith, Studinger, Sonntag, Csatho,
Larour, Rignot, Fahnestock, Harbin, Martin
Jezek began with a review of the agenda: update on King Air; Sonntag flight plans; preparations
for next week OIB meeting.
Studinger summarized the King Air aircraft status. At this point, NASA is reviewing costs and
no decision has been made. The aircraft would have a 5 to 5.5 hour range at about 28,000 ft.
LVIS would be integrated into the aircraft. About 80 flight hours is envisioned and expended
over a 2-week deployment during the Spring.
Sonntag summarized each flight planned over the ice sheet and ice caps. NW03 skirts the
seaward margin for gravity measurements of fjords. Awaiting reports during PARCA on the
likely success of that activity.
Cryocore flight includes a Cryosat underpass and an ICESat repeat. Luthcke will help refine the
ICESat repeat track. Studinger requested that discussion of segments for ice cores be deferred.
Fahnestock agreed to further investigate relevance to IceBridge. This and other ancillary
requests were reviewed during the Jan 5 telecon and will be reviewed again next week.
Jezek mentioned receipt of Cryovex planning document and will post to web pending ESA
concurrence. Plan will be useful for refining several flights including Devon Island Cryosat
underflight.
Csatho noted a gap in coverage around southern Greenland (Narsarsuaq). She will develop a
recommended flight line for that area.
Discussion by Joughin, Rignot and Smith for survey of Geike Plateau converged on a set of
flights that will establish baseline measurements of elevation, measure select glaciers for ice
thickness along flow lines and measure a simplified grid across glaciers. ICEsat repeats will also
be flown. One of the Geike lines to be modified to include a pass along the EGIG line.
Increased sampling of Russel glacier was discussed. Larour noted that this plan would benefit
modeling.
Jezek will review previous ATM flights over OSU clusters and refine Cluster/Duck flight as
needed. Jezek reiterated that cluster flights are consistent with the science requirements and
recommended that all future flight proposals be accompanied by a science justification and a
demonstration of compliance with requirements.
Contingency flights for north Greenland were addressed. Csatho will develop recommendations
for ICEsat repeats over northern Greenland glaciers and ATM repeats. Jezek recommended a
reflight of the BNGE line. Additional recommendations included center line flights down
Zacharia and 79 North Glaciers. Csatho recommended building a baseline dataset for dh/dt
measurements over Humboldt glacier. Other options including additional Peterman and North
East Ice Stream flights.
Young reported plans for UT flights in southern Greenland. Plan is to do high resolution
mapping of southern glaciers using a photon counting lidar. This will be useful for IceBridge
comparisons but data availability is under discussion. Data availability for other data sets is
governed by a separate policy independent of IceBridge.
Plan for next week is to fill gaps (today’s discussion as well as issues that arise during PARCA)
and prioritize data. Priority will be a general priority. Where there are multiple flights in the
same geographic area, there will be another priority assigned.