Arctic snow properties from dual frequency airborne radar altimetry and in situ sea ice observations
Abstract
Snow introduces one of the largest error sources when estimating sea ice thickness from remote sensed freeboard observations. Therefore, it is important to investigate the influence of snow on different radar altimeter observations to obtain reliable sea ice thickness data from e.g. satellite missions like the European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat-2.
The ESA CryoSat-2 validation experiment in Spring 2017 aimed at collecting dual frequency (Ka- and Ku-band) airborne radar altimetry together with near-infrared laser scanning of Arctic sea ice in different regions. The airborne data was collected by DTU Space with the ESA Ku-band radar altimeter (ASIRAS), the MetaSensing Ka-band radar altimeter (KAREN), and the Riegl laser scanner from a platform on a Twin-Otter aircraft. Besides aligning with the satellite track, the data collection was coordinated with extensive on-ice field observation of snow and ice properties providing the opportunity to compare sea ice parameters on scales from local to near pan-Arctic. Here, we present an investigation of the co-located airborne and in-situ observations from this campaign collected along a CryoSat-2 ground track in April 2017. The track extended from the Northeast tip of Ellesmere Island, Canada, 400 km into the Central Arctic Ocean.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.C33B..05S
- Keywords:
-
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0766 Thermodynamics;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0770 Properties;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0774 Dynamics;
- CRYOSPHERE