Extending the Arctic Sea Ice Freeboard and Sea Level Record with the Sentinel-3 Radar Altimeters

In February 2016 and April 2018 the European Space Agency launched the Sentinel-3A and 3B satellites respectively, as part of the European Commission’s multi-satellite Copernicus Programme. Here we process Sentinel-3A waveform data to estimate Arctic sea level anomaly and radar freeboard from Novemb...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lawrence, IR, Armitage, TWK, Tsamados, MC, Stroeve, JC, Dinardo, S, Ridout, AL, Muir, A, Tilling, RL, Shepherd, A
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Elsevier BV 2019
Subjects:
Sea ice
Radar altimetry
CryoSat-2
Sentinel-3
Sea-level anomaly
Radar freeboard
Arctic
The Sentinel
Online Access:https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10084072/1/ILawrence_ASR_revised_v2.pdf
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10084072/
Description
Summary:In February 2016 and April 2018 the European Space Agency launched the Sentinel-3A and 3B satellites respectively, as part of the European Commission’s multi-satellite Copernicus Programme. Here we process Sentinel-3A waveform data to estimate Arctic sea level anomaly and radar freeboard from November 2017 to April 2018. We compare our results to those from the CryoSat-2 satellite, and find an intermission bias on sea-level anomaly of 2 cm. We also find a mean radar freeboard difference of 1 cm, which we attribute to the use of empirical retrackers to retrieve lead and floe elevations. Ahead of Sentinel-3B waveform data being made available, we use orbit files to estimate the improvement in sampling resolution afforded by the addition of Sentinel-3A and 3B data to the CryoSat-2 dataset. By combining data from the three satellites, grid resolution or time-sampling can be almost tripled compared with using CryoSat-2 data alone.

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