Combining ESA and NASA missions to enhance satellite altimetry over sea ice
Abstract
The European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat-2 radar altimeter satellite has provided a continuous time series of Arctic winter sea ice thickness for nearly a decade. The launch of NASA's ICESat-2 laser altimeter satellite in September 2018 presents a unique opportunity to combine radar and laser measurements over the Polar sea ice cover, year-round, up to 88° north and south. In this talk we explore the potential applications of combining CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 measurements, to advance our understanding of sea ice across scales and seasons. The ~20-100 m footprint of ICESat-2 enables us to examine the sea ice floe length and thickness distributions at shorter scales than CryoSat-2 (~300 m). These measurements could survey an even greater fraction of small, thin sea ice floes and so enhance Arctic sea ice thickness estimates, building on previous work using data from ESA's CryoSat-2 and Envisat satellites. Additional applications include the estimation of snow depth on Arctic sea ice from differences in laser and radar freeboard, and melt pond detection from ICESat-2's photon-counting technology. Combining ESA and NASA data will help us develop a year-round time series of sea ice thickness across the Arctic, and reduce and better understand its associated uncertainties.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.C54B..07T
- Keywords:
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- 0738 Ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0744 Rivers;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0746 Lakes;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0794 Instruments and techniques;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL