Antarctic ice sheet thickness derived from teleseismic receiver functions

Ice sheet thickness is a fundamental parameter in research on Antarctic ice sheet mass and ice sheet dynamic model construction, which has great significance for glacial isostatic adjustment, ice sheet mass balance and global climate change studies. Accurate ice thickness acquired utilizing the seismological receiver function and H-Kappa grid search method can not only be an independent comparison and verification for the ice thickness obtained by radio echo sounding method, but also fill the gap of radio echo sounding measurement in Antarctica. In this paper, P-receiver functions (PRFs) are extracted from teleseismic events waveform data recorded by the temporary seismic arrays deployed on the ice sheet, then the ice thickness beneath the stations is calculated using the H-Kappa method. Compared the ice thickness derived from PRFs with Bedmap2 ice sheet thickness database, the results show that most of the differences are within 200 meters, and only a few reach 600 meters, which may be attributed to the vacancy of Bedmap2 survey lines and the uncertainty of radio echo sounding, as well as the inherit complexity of the inner ice structure beneath some stations. It can be concluded that the ice thickness obtained from the teleseismic receiver function method is reliable, thus it can not only be an independent verification for radio echo sounding results, but also provide an effective method for making up the limitations of radio echo sounding measurements. At the same time, the complexity of the receiver function waveforms beneath several stations may also indicate that the inner velocity structure of the Antarctic ice sheet is not homogeneous. There may be complex velocity structure in the ice sheet, and it is necessary to use some other methods such as receiver function waveform inversion and surface wave inversion for further study.