Probing the cryosphere with an Earth Observation orbiting radar sounder

• Main Authors: Sanchari Thakur, Elena Donini, Francesca Bovolo, Lorenzo Bruzzone
• Other Authors: Thakur, Sanchari, Donini, Elena, Bovolo, Francesca, Bruzzone, Lorenzo
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: European space Agency Living Planet Symposium 2019
• Subjects: Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; glacier; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11572/244882; https://lps19.esa.int/NikalWebsitePortal/living-planet-symposium-2019/lps19

The dynamic changes in the cryosphere, such as the ice calving fed by seaward flowing glaciers, have a significant impact on the society and environment, by contributing to the increase of the sea-level rise. This requires a continuous monitoring of the processes occurring within the ice-sheets to predict the dynamics and stability of the polar ice-caps. Radar sounders can acquire profiles of the subsurface (radargrams) that provide rich information for estimating the Essential Climate Variables (ECV) and better understanding the processes and structures in the ice. Subsurface targets detected from the radargrams can be used to determine: (i) the surface and the basal interface topography, ii) the ice sheet thickness and the internal layering, (iii) the characteristics of ice shelves and the position of the grounding line, (iv) the basal boundary conditions and ice flow regime, and (v) the ice mass balance. Currently, there are a number of airborne radar sounders (e.g., POLARIS [1] and MCoRDS [2]) that have been acquiring data over the Earth’s icy areas over the last decades. Significant information on the glacier structure and processes in Greenland and Antarctica have been extracted from the analysis of these radargrams [5-7]. However, these data are acquired seasonally and over specific regions, and thus they do not provide uniform coverage in space and time nor have homogeneous data quality. These limitations can be addressed by a satellite-mounted radar sounder, which would provide continuous, homogeneous, and uniform coverage of the cryosphere. The Earth-orbiting radar sounder should be designed to operate at a central frequency in the HF-VHF range with a bandwidth of 10 MHz, to have a penetration depth up to 5 km and a vertical resolution about 10 meters in ice. However, data acquired by orbiting radar sounders are subjected to the cosmic microwave background, path loss, relatively low transmit power, ionospheric effects, and poor resolution due to the altitude of the platform and the constraints on the ...