Dr. Winebrenners’ interests are in the physics of light and radio waves, and in the exploration of icy environments on Earth and elsewhere based on that physics.
For sea ice, he has developed a physically based method to observe the springtime melting and fall freeze-up transitions on Arctic sea ice using synthetic aperture radar, and has shown that polarimetric microwave backscattering from thin sea ice depends on ice thickness and thus may be useful for remote thickness estimation. Recently he has investigated the optical fluorescence from chlorophyll in sea ice, with the aim of estimating phototrophic biomass near the ice-water interface. Microwave emissions are used to map (decadal-scale) mean surface temperature and accumulation rate fields, for ice sheet on both Greenland and Antarctica.
Most recently, Dale Winebrenner has begun to investigate meter-wavelength radar sounding of ice sheets. The first result of this work is a new means of estimating electromagnetic absorption within the ice sheet.
Past Students:
Selected Publications
Winebrenner, D. P., Kintner, P. M. S., & MacGregor, J. A. (2019). New estimates of ice and oxygen fluxes across the entire lid of Lake Vostok from observations of englacial radio wave attenuation. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 124, 795–811. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JF004692
Koutnik, M.R., E.D. Waddington, D.P. Winebrenner, and A.V. Pathare, “Response timescales for Martian ice masses and implications for ice flow on Mars”, Icarus 225, 949-959, 2013.
MacGregor, J.A., K. Matsuoka, M.R. Koutnik, E.D. Waddington, M. Studinger, and D.P. Winebrenner,’ Millennially averaged accumulation rates for the Vostok Subglacial Lake region inferred from deep internal layers’, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 25-34
Koutnik, M.R., E.D. Waddington, and D.P. Winebrenner,’ A method to infer past surface mass balance and topography from internal layers in martian polar layered deposits’, Icarus, 204, 458-470, 2009.
Zurk, L.M., B. Orlowski, D.P. Winebrenner, E.I. Thorsos, M.R. Leahy-Hoppa, and L.M. Hayden,’ Terahertz scattering from granular material’, Journal of the Optical Society of America, B 24(9), pp. 2238-2243, 2007.
MacGregor, J.A., D.P. Winebrenner, H. Conway, K. Matsuoka, P.A. Mayewski, and G.D. Clow,’ Modeling englacial radar attenuation at Siple Dome, West Antarctica using ice chemistry and temperature data’, Journal of Geophysical Research , 112 F03008, doi:10.1029/2006JF000717, 2007.
Arthern, R. J., D. P. Winebrenner, and D. G. Vaughan,’ Antarctic Snow Accumulation Mapped Using Polarization of 4.3-cm Wavelength Microwave Emission’, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. iii, D06107, doi:10.1029/2004JD005667, 2006.
Karlöf, L., D. P. Winebrenner, and D. B. Percival,’ How Representative is a Time Series Derived from a Firn Core? A Study at a Low Accumulation Site of the Antarctic Plateau’, submitted to J. Geophys. Res., 2006.
Winebrenner, D.P., E.J. Steig and D.P. Schneider,’ Temporal co-variation of surface and microwave brightness temperatures in Antarctica, with implications for the observation of surface-temperature variability using satellite data’, Ann. Glaciology, Vol. 39, 2004.
Winebrenner, D.P., B. Smith, G. Catania, C.F. Raymond, and H. Conway,’ Estimation of the temperature-dependence of radio-frequency attenuation beneath Siple Dome, from wide-angle and profiling radar observations’, Ann. Glaciology, Vol. 37, 2003.
Fisher, D.A., D.P. Winebrenner, and H. Stern, 2002, Lineations on the white accumulation areas of the residual northern ice cap of Mars: Their relation to the ‘accublation’ and ice flow hypothesis, Icarus, 159, pp. 39-52.
Winebrenner, D.P., R.J. Arthern, and C.A. Shuman,’ Mapping Greenland accumulation rates using observations of thermal emission at 4.5 cm wavelength‘, J. Geophys. Res., 106(D24), pp. 33,919-33,934, 2001.
Joughin, I., D. Winebrenner, M. Fahnestock, R. Kwok, and W. Krabill, Measurement of ice- sheet topography using satellite radar interferometry, J. Glaciol., 42(140), 10-22, 1996.
Winebrenner, D.P., L.D. Farmer, and I.R. Joughin, On the Response of polarimetric synthetic- aperture radar signatures at 24-cm wavelength to sea-ice thickness in Arctic leads, Radio Sci., 30(2), 373-402, 1995.
Joughin, I.R., D.P. Winebrenner, and M.A. Fahnestock, Observations of ice-sheet motion in Greenland Using Satellite Radar Interferometry, Geophys. Res. Lett., 22(5), 571-574, 1995.