The Coastal Zone: A Mission Target for Satellite Altimeters

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) altimetry is rapidly becoming the most efficient way to measure small-scale changes in elevations of ice, land, and water surfaces as well as sea ice thickness. This new generation altimeter, first launched on board the CryoSat-2 satellite, fires 10 times more radar pu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union
Main Authors: Cipollini, Paolo, Vignudelli, Stefano, Benveniste, Jérôme
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/363167/
Description
Summary:Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) altimetry is rapidly becoming the most efficient way to measure small-scale changes in elevations of ice, land, and water surfaces as well as sea ice thickness. This new generation altimeter, first launched on board the CryoSat-2 satellite, fires 10 times more radar pulses per second than the previous generation and exploits the motion of the spacecraft to achieve a 20-fold increase in along-track resolution and twofold improvement in its accuracy.