Measuring the winter sea level in the Arctic coastal domain with CryoSat-2 SARIn mode: potential and limitations
Abstract
For several decades, r emote sensing observations have shown a rapid reduction of the ice-covered area and thinning of the ice in the Arctic Ocean 1,2 . Besides the scientific interest as climate indicator s, knowledge of sea ice and ocean dynamics is important for the shipping and fishery industries. Being the natural interface between the oceans and humans, the coastal zone is also where chang es in the sea level and the sea ice thickness have the largest impact on human society 3 .
In the last 25 years, satellite radar altimetry has been used to monitor the polar oceans . Despite recent improvements in coastal altimetry, coastal sea level estimates in ice-covered regions are still extremely sparse, due to the technical challenges faced by altimetry in coastal regions 3 , a nd because the density of measurements is determined by the number and spatial distribution of leads . As the temporal and spatial scales of physical processes decrease in the coastal domain 3 , the low availability of winter sea surface estimates limits our knowledge of seasonal ocean physical processes as well as it casts large uncertainty on sea ice thickness estimates. Along the Arctic coastline, ESA's CryoSat-2 (CS2) satellite radar altimetry mission operates in S AR Interferometric (SARIn) mode. U sing the phase information available in this mode has been suggested to provide more accurate sea level estimates in ice-covered regions, and with a lower uncertainty, than regular SAR mode, due to the ability to correct for off-nadir ranging to leads 4 .- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMC028.0008D
- Keywords:
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- 0726 Ice sheets;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0762 Mass balance;
- CRYOSPHERE