CPOM publishes paper ‘Multipeak retracking of radar altimetry waveforms over ice sheets’ in Remote Sensing of Environment, introducing a new processing approach, aimed at overcoming challenges associated with using radar altimetry to measure ice sheet changes over rugged coastal topography in Antarctica and Greenland.
Image: Geographic distribution of waveform peaks across (a) Greenland and (b) Antarctica for Sentinel-3A cycle 44, with the modal value of the number of peaks shown for each 2 × 2 km grid cell. Taken from the paper.
This new MultiPeak processing approach which is applied to data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, ‘significantly improves the accuracy and quantity of elevation retrievals’ and and has the potential to enhance ‘the capability of SAR altimeters to track ice sheet imbalance’.This is an important step forward in developing more sophisticated monitoring approaches for tracking ice loss in the most complex regions which contribute to global seal level rise. The paper is co-authored by CPOM Senior Research Associate Dr Qi Huang (Lancaster University), CPOM Associate Investigator Professor Mal McMillan (Lancaster University), CPOM Systems, Data, Product Manager Alan Muir (UCL), CPOM Affiliate Joe Phillips (Lancaster University) and CPOM Research Fellow Dr Thomas Slater (Northumbria University).