Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards
Snow depth on sea ice remains one of the largest uncertainties in sea ice thickness retrievals from satellite altimetry. Here we outline an approach for deriving snow depth that can be applied to any coincident freeboard measurements after calibration with independent observations of snow and ice fr...
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ftucl:oai:eprints.ucl.ac.uk.OAI2:10062936 2023-12-24T10:14:23+01:00 Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards Lawrence, IR Tsamados, MC Stroeve, JC Armitage, TWK Ridout, AL 2018-11 text https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/1/tc-12-3551-2018.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/ eng eng COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/1/tc-12-3551-2018.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/ open The Cryosphere , 12 (11) pp. 3551-3564. (2018) Article 2018 ftucl 2023-11-27T13:07:32Z Snow depth on sea ice remains one of the largest uncertainties in sea ice thickness retrievals from satellite altimetry. Here we outline an approach for deriving snow depth that can be applied to any coincident freeboard measurements after calibration with independent observations of snow and ice freeboard. Freeboard estimates from CryoSat-2 (Ku band) and AltiKa (Ka band) are calibrated against data from NASA's Operation IceBridge (OIB) to align AltiKa with the snow surface and CryoSat-2 with the ice–snow interface. Snow depth is found as the difference between the two calibrated freeboards, with a correction added for the slower speed of light propagation through snow. We perform an initial evaluation of our derived snow depth product against OIB snow depth data by excluding successive years of OIB data from the analysis. We find a root-mean-square deviation of 7.7, 5.3, 5.9, and 6.7 cm between our snow thickness product and OIB data from the springs of 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. We further demonstrate the applicability of the method to ICESat and Envisat, offering promising potential for the application to CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2, which launched in September 2018. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Sea ice The Cryosphere University College London: UCL Discovery Arctic |
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Open Polar |
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University College London: UCL Discovery |
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ftucl |
language |
English |
description |
Snow depth on sea ice remains one of the largest uncertainties in sea ice thickness retrievals from satellite altimetry. Here we outline an approach for deriving snow depth that can be applied to any coincident freeboard measurements after calibration with independent observations of snow and ice freeboard. Freeboard estimates from CryoSat-2 (Ku band) and AltiKa (Ka band) are calibrated against data from NASA's Operation IceBridge (OIB) to align AltiKa with the snow surface and CryoSat-2 with the ice–snow interface. Snow depth is found as the difference between the two calibrated freeboards, with a correction added for the slower speed of light propagation through snow. We perform an initial evaluation of our derived snow depth product against OIB snow depth data by excluding successive years of OIB data from the analysis. We find a root-mean-square deviation of 7.7, 5.3, 5.9, and 6.7 cm between our snow thickness product and OIB data from the springs of 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. We further demonstrate the applicability of the method to ICESat and Envisat, offering promising potential for the application to CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2, which launched in September 2018. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Lawrence, IR Tsamados, MC Stroeve, JC Armitage, TWK Ridout, AL |
spellingShingle |
Lawrence, IR Tsamados, MC Stroeve, JC Armitage, TWK Ridout, AL Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
author_facet |
Lawrence, IR Tsamados, MC Stroeve, JC Armitage, TWK Ridout, AL |
author_sort |
Lawrence, IR |
title |
Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
title_short |
Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
title_full |
Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
title_fullStr |
Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
title_full_unstemmed |
Estimating snow depth over Arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
title_sort |
estimating snow depth over arctic sea ice from calibrated dual-frequency radar freeboards |
publisher |
COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/1/tc-12-3551-2018.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/ |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Sea ice The Cryosphere |
genre_facet |
Arctic Sea ice The Cryosphere |
op_source |
The Cryosphere , 12 (11) pp. 3551-3564. (2018) |
op_relation |
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/1/tc-12-3551-2018.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062936/ |
op_rights |
open |
_version_ |
1786193500301164544 |