The Greenland Ice Sheet as a Dielectric Resonator

Pure ice at low frequencies up to 2 kHz and fresh water up to rather high frequencies up to 1 GHz have high dielectric constants. For this reason masses of ice and fresh water could potentially appear as natural dielectric resonators. In practice such natural resonators often have a form of planar waveguides. Theoretical estimates of the resonant frequencies of such waveguides are made. In the case of ice, the low-frequency threshold requires that the ice sheet should have a large depth exceeding roughly 500 m. Corresponding estimates were applied to the Greenland ice sheet. The case of fresh water reservoirs was also considered and an experimental attempt to measure such resonances at a small water reservoir was made.