Airborne campaigns for CryoSat pre-launch calibration and validation

• Main Authors: Hvidegaard, Sine Munk, Forsberg, René, Skourup, Henriette, Stenseng, Lars
• Format: Other Non-Article Part of Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: European Space Agency 2010
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Svalbard; Canada; Greenland; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/d04b28a9-2b51-4cc0-9c27-34b4abf2f057

From 2003 to 2008 DTU Space together with ESA and several international partners carried out airborne and ground field campaigns in preparation for CryoSat validation; called CryoVEx: CryoSat Validation Experiments covering the main ice caps in Greenland, Canada and Svalbard and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The main goal of the airborne surveys was to acquire coincident scanning laser and CryoSat type radar elevation measurements of the surface; either sea ice or land ice. Selected lines have been surveyed along with detailed mapping of validation sites coordinated with insitu field work and helicopter electromagnetic surveying. This paper summarises the pre-launch campaigns and presents some of the result from the coincident measurement from airborne and ground observations.