What lies under sheets of ice? You can dig up the soil to see what lies below. You can look deep into the clear waters to see what lies below. But how can you tell what lies below a vast sheet of ice? Sheets of ice Scientists and explorers have been trying for years to reach the answer. Recently, they decided to find out what lies below the layers of ice in Greenland. Nasa’s Operation IceBridge is using radar to probe through the ice sheet and collect data to make the first map of the Greenland ice sheet.   We are now getting wiser about how old are the fields of ice, how they are formed and how deep they run. We can also see how these ice sheets are flowing. New techniques used in this study allowed scientists to efficiently pick out these layers. Ice-penetrating radar sends radar signals into the ice and recording the strength and return time of reflected signals. From those signals, scientists detect the ice surface, the rocks under the ice and even the different layers of ice. Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist or someone who studies glaciers at The University of Texas and his team have studied ice from different climate periods. After collecting and comparing the information from ice cores, they hope to be able to predict how the Greenland ice sheet may move in times to come. Still wondering?

Ice cores are cylinders of ice drilled out from the ice sheet. They are studied closely and show up indicators like volcanic ash and dust flying around before that layer of the ice sheet formed.