Seismology Gets Under the Skin of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Abstract

The compacted firn layer skin of an ice sheet protects it from surface melting. Vibrations of the firn layer measured with seismometers Chaput et al. (2018, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL079665) can portray how the firn layer melts, absorbs water, and refreezes, thus giving a sense of how ice sheets are resisting being denuded of their firn layer skin by climate warming.