Stanford team creates low-cost 'ORCA' radar system to probe glaciers

STANFORD, Calif. (KGO) -- It takes some sophisticated technology to peer through our planet's threatened ice sheets. But now researchers from around the world may have an easier way to explore the damage.

A team from Stanford has developed a low-cost ice-penetrating radar system that's meant to be shared. It's known as ORCA for Open Radar Code Architecture.

"An ice-penetrating radar is a system uses relatively low frequency radio waves, usually looking straight down through the ice. It takes advantage of the fact that ice is relatively radio transparent at these like hundreds of megahertz and below frequencies. So, you're able to image through that ice, see the in-glacial layering and then see the bedrock that exists beneath the ice or the ocean if you're on an ice shelf or whatever it is," said researcher Thomas Teisberg.

At their lab at Stanford, Teisberg and fellow researcher Daniel May showed off the drones and radar kits that have been deployed in areas like Greenland and island glaciers in the Arctic Circle. They say peering through the ice is key to understanding melting glaciers and their potential effect on sea level rise. May has focused on the massive Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "Doomsday Glacier," melting in Antarctica.

"The geology below the glacier, as well as like the temperature within the glacier and trying to figure out how that that boundary is going to move over time," May said.

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But often, just getting the radar equipment to the glacier is a major challenge. The Stanford team, including collaborator Anna Broome, has developed makeshift transport systems out of everything from snowmobiles to innertube mounted sleds.

"So, a standard sled wasn't going to do very well, because standard sled is you pass over even a small crevasse in the ice, then the sled can get stuck in that crevasse and then you have to dig it out. And that's a whole pain. So this concept of using a whole bunch of inner tubes linked by flexible bamboo was really great," Teisberg said.

The team says the goal is to help other research teams build affordable equipment unique to their work. While some ice penetrating radar systems used by government agencies can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Stanford team says it can build a base model for about $1,500 using its open-source design. It potentially gives smaller global research teams a chance to help find solutions to a problem threatening our entire planet.

The Stanford team also says the hardware used to build the radar is also generic, which helps to keeps the cost down.