In April 2024, a team of scientists led by NASA’s Chad Greene embarked on a mission over Greenland to study the ice sheet with advanced radar technology. The goal was to measure ice thickness and understand how ice behaves under changing climate conditions. However, as the team flew over the vast expanse of snow and ice, they encountered something unexpected—a long-buried structure, revealing the hidden remnants of a Cold War-era facility. The discovery, made with the help of UAVSAR radar technology, provides new insights into the ice sheet’s internal structure and its potential implications for future sea level rise.
This unexpected find was detailed in an article published by NASA’s Earth Observatory, where scientists used ground-penetrating radar and advanced synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to map out and locate structures within Greenland’s icy surface. The data gathered not only revealed the secret location of the abandoned facility, but also provided crucial information about how ice sheets might behave as the climate continues to warm
The Unexpected Discovery
The initial goal of the mission was to map ice thickness and study the bedrock below the ice. But the team, led by Alex Gardner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), got an unexpected surprise when their radar signals picked up an unusual structure beneath the ice. “We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” said Gardner, who helped lead the research. “We didn’t know what it was at first.”
Camp Century, an old U.S. military base established in 1959, had been buried for decades under layers of ice after it was abandoned in 1967. The facility, originally built for nuclear testing, was designed to be a secret base and remained largely hidden until now. The unexpected radar image provided the first clear look at the structures still encased beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet.
A Breakthrough in Radar Technology
The UAVSAR radar system, which was mounted on the aircraft during the April 2024 mission, provided the researchers with a much more detailed, three-dimensional view of the ice sheet. Unlike traditional radar, which creates a flat profile of the ice, UAVSAR has the ability to capture sideways views, allowing scientists to map subsurface structures more accurately.
“In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” said Greene, a scientist involved in the study. The ability to observe hidden underground features in unprecedented detail opens up new possibilities for understanding the layers of ice and the long-term consequences of climate change on the arctic regions. This breakthrough could ultimately help predict how ice sheets will behave as the climate continues to shift.
The Implications for Climate Research
The study of ice sheet dynamics is essential for understanding the impact of global warming and the potential for rising sea levels. The new data gathered from Greenland provides scientists with crucial information about how ice behaves under pressure and how it will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere.
“Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” explained Gardner. This discovery not only sheds light on a long-forgotten facility beneath the ice but also provides critical insights into the processes that affect the entire ice sheet, which could contribute significantly to future sea-level projections.
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