Assessment of ICESat-2 for the recovery of ocean topography

SUMMARY The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) laser altimetry mission, launched in September 2018, uses six parallel lidar tracks with very fine along-track resolution (15 m) to measure the topography of ice, ocean surfaces. Here we assess ability ICESat-2 data recover oceanographic signals ranging from surface gravity waves marine geoid. We focus on a region tropical Pacific study photon height both wavenumber space domain. Results show that an single track can geoid at wavelengths >20 km which is similar best radar altimeter data. wavelength propagation direction are sometimes well resolved by using combination strong weak beams, separated 90 m. find higher than expected power 3–20 band where should be small. This artificial caused projection 2-D ∼300 m into longer (5–10 km) because 1-D sampling along narrow profile. Thus will not provide major improvements recovery most ocean.