Sensitivity of CryoSat-2 Arctic sea-ice freeboard and thickness on radar-waveform interpretation

• Main Authors: R. Ricker, S. Hendricks, V. Helm, H. Skourup, M. Davidson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.567.7538; http://www.the-cryosphere.net/8/1607/2014/tc-8-1607-2014.pdf

Abstract. In the context of quantifying Arctic ice-volume de-crease at global scale, the CryoSat-2 satellite was launched in 2010 and is equipped with the Ku band synthetic aper-ture radar altimeter SIRAL (Synthetic Aperture Interfero-metric Radar Altimeter), which we use to derive sea-ice free-board defined as the height of the ice surface above the sea level. Accurate CryoSat-2 range measurements over open water and the ice surface of the order of centimetres are necessary to achieve the required accuracy of the freeboard-to-thickness conversion. Besides uncertainties of the actual sea-surface height and limited knowledge of ice and snow properties, the composition of radar backscatter and there-fore the interpretation of radar echoes is crucial. This has consequences in the selection of retracker algorithms which are used to track the main scattering horizon and assign a