By Mana Inoue
One of Sarah and my role in the field is carrying out the ice core borehole temperature measurement and optical televiewer (OPTV) measurement. The OPTV is a kind of camera that films and analyse the snow and ice layers.
Temperature record will give us an idea of the energy budget changes in the ice sheet. OPTV measurement will give us an idea of the density profile through the ice core borehole.
OPTV measurement “the ice fishing”
OPTV is also able to tell us the vertical strain rate (how much of the snow accumulation in the year is thinning by the weight of another one year of snow accumulation) by comparing the OPTV record from the previous year measurement.
How we do the measurement? Both temperature and OPTV measurement were similar. We put a temperature probe or OPTV probe into the ice core borehole and record what the machine tells us.
Which means there is not much physical movement during this measurement. And if we don’t move much it gets cold quick. To at least protect from wind, we have a tent around us during the measurement. At the result, we look like we are doing ice fishing.
We will do further analysis with the data when we back to our lab. Wait for us for the exciting finding!
OPTV camera view
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