Assessing Scale Dependence on Local Sea Level Retrievals from Laser Altimetry Data over Sea Ice

Laser altimetry sampling strategies over sea ice

With the conclusion of the science phase of the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission in late 2009, and the planned launch of ICESat-2 in late 2015, NASA has recently established the IceBridge program to provide continuity between missions. A major goal of IceBridge is to obtain a sea-ice thickness time series via airborne surveys over the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Typicall...

Estimating past continental ice volume from sea-level data

We predict sea-level change since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) at four far-field sites (Barbados, Bonaparte Gulf, Huon Peninsula and Tahiti) using a revised theoretical formalism. This formalism includes a time-varying shoreline geometry, an accurate treatment of sea-level variations near regions of ice retreat and the influence of glacial cycle perturbations in Earth rotation. We elucidate t...

On the Retrieval of Sea Ice Thickness and Snow Depth using Concurrent Laser Altimetry and L-Band Remote Sensing Data

The accurate knowledge of sea ice parameters, including sea ice thickness and snow depth over the sea ice cover, are key to both climate studies and data assimilation in operational forecasts. Large-scale active and passive remote sensing is the basis for the estimation of these parameters. In traditional altimetry or the retrieval of snow depth with passive microwave sensing, although the sea ...

Ice sheets and sea level.

MODIS Sea Ice Thickness and Open Water-Sea Ice Charts over the Barents and Kara Seas for Development and Validation of Sea Ice Products from Microwave Sensor Data

We have developed algorithms and procedures for calculating daily sea ice thickness (SIT) and open water–sea ice (OWSI) charts, based on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), ice surface temperature (IST) (night-time only), and reflectance (R) swath data, respectively. The resolution of the SIT chart is 1 km and that of the OWSI chart is 250 m. The charts are targeted to be...