Projects Archive

Collaborations

Sentinel-3 Validation Team

Description: Independent validation is a critical aspect of providing credibility to a satellite mission and is a pre-requisite to it being fit for purpose. The validation is performed by independent and experienced scientists and engineers in specialised disciplines, and provides a reference for the diverse and widespread activities that are expected to occur within the scientific community following the launch of Sentinel-3A.

Partners: ESA, Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL)

CPOM role: Providing expertise in ice sheet altimetry.

Start date: 2013

Outcomes: Satellite mission planning and operational disciplines.

ESA-STSE Antarctic Peninsula Mass Balance (APMB)

Description: The APMB project will provide an improved estimate of Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet mass balance from satellite techniques by increasing the spatial extent and time period that our measurements cover. The project began in 2013 and will run for two years. It is an international collaboration between seven institutions, and is supported by ESA’s Support to Science Element (STSE) program. APMB will deliver important new scientific results which will better our understanding of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet and its contribution to sea level change.

Partners: Dresden University of Technology, ENVEO, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), UCL, Utrecht University, ESA

CPOM role: Providing the science lead, project management and altimetry expertise.

Start date: 2013

Outcomes: So far the project has delivered project documents including a Scientific Goals Report, Data Access Requirements Report, Independent Experiment Design Report and Independent Experiment Report.

URL: http://www.stse-apmb.org/

Glaciers and Ice Caps Climate Change Initiative (CCI)

Description: The main objective of the Glaciers and Ice Caps CCI is to contribute to the creation of a globally complete and detailed glacier inventory. This activity has two major parts: One is data creation (glacier outlines) in selected and currently still missing key regions, and the other one is in establishing a more consistent framework for glacier entity identification to enhance the integrity and error characterization of the available data sets. As meltwater from glaciers and icecaps provide a substantial contribution to global sea-level rise, the project will also create two additional products in selected key regions, elevation changes and velocity fields.

Partners: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), ENVEO, University of Oslo, Gamma Remote Sensing

CPOM role: Providing altimetry expertise to derive volume change of ice caps globally.

Start date: 2011

Outcomes: The project was renewed for a second phase commencing 2014. So far we have delivered project documents including a User Requirements Document, Data Access and Requirements Document and the Product Specification Document.

URL: http://www.esa-glaciers-cci.org/

CryoSat Performance Monitoring and QA website

Description: MSSL monitor CryoSat performance from Level-2 data products provided by the ESA IPF processing centre at Kiruna. Data has been monitored since the start of the operational phase (18-Oct-2010) and this site shows output from all available versions of the IPF processors.

Partners: ESA, MSSL, Telespazio Vega (IDEAS)

CPOM role: Service developed, maintained and managed for ESA to provide scientific & operations support for the Cryosat-2 radar altimeter; performance monitoring; QA for CryoSat SIRAL data processing.

Start date: 2010

Outcomes: This is an ongoing ESA project to provide a CryoSat L2 and L2i data quality assurance website for ESA via a fully maintained and up-to-date performance monitoring and QA website. In 2015 we added support for the new ESA Baseline-C products and in 2016 will QA the complete reprocessed Baseline-C data set since start of mission.

URL: http://cryosat.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/qa

Reprocessing chain for the ERS satellite altimetry dataset (REAPER)

Description: The REAPER product data set is a result of a complete reprocessing of ESA’s 12 year archive of ERS-1 and ERS-2’s Altimetry data. The website shows the availability of current REAPER L2 GDR files/cycle for any processing baseline.

Partners: ESA, MSSL, isardSAT, Institut FranÃ§ais de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)
CPOM role Software engineering involved with the QA and validation of the data, and setup of the REAPER QA website for ESA.

Start date: 2010

Outcomes: The REAPER reprocessing chain (REprocessing of Altimeter Products for ERS), a project for ESA, was completed in September 2014 with delivery of the REAPER v1 data set, Product Handbook and QA website. Major improvements with respect to the previous ESA RA products format (OPR – Ocean Product – and WAP – Waveform product) were implemented (e.g. the 4 Envisat RA-2 retrackers, RA calibration improvement, new reprocessed Precise Orbit Solution, ECMWF ERA-interim model, NICO09 ionospheric correction until 1998, GIM ionospheric correction up to 2003, new SSB, etc.).

The assessment of the REAPER data quality versus the ERS OPR and WAP data shows a clear improvement in terms of accuracy over the tandem periods between ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat missions (currently assessed periods). Work is now in progress for a further reprocessing campaign (REAPER v1.1) which will address some remaining issues such as poor MWR Wet tropospheric correction, out of range PTR corrections, etc.

URL: http://reaper.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/qa

Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre

Description: As part of the Sentinel-3 mission and in order to ensure the highest quality of products, ESA and EUMETSAT set up the Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre. This facility is part of the Payload Data Ground Segment and aims to control the quality of all generated products, from L0 to L2. It is composed of a Coordinating Centre, where the core infrastructure is hosted, which is in charge of the main routine activities (especially the quality control of data) and the overall service management.

Partners: ESA, ACRI-ST, MSSL

CPOM role: Supporting the commissioning and long term performance monitoring of Sentinel-3 radar altimetry data as the designated Expert Support Laboratory (ESL) for land and sea Ice.

Start date: 2014

Outcomes: During 2015 we provided Cal/Val plans for the commissioning (Feb 2016 – March 2017) and operational phases (Apr 2017-Apr-2025) of Sentinel-3a and 3b, and developed tools to support the commissioning over land and sea ice. During 2016 we will perform the commissioning of Sentinel-3a according to the Cal/Val plan.

Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre

Description: ACE-CRC aims to provide public and private sector decisionâ€makers with improved information to guide informed policy decisions on sea level rise mitigation and adaptation. To achieve this, researchers are working to understand how the Antarctic ice sheet is likely to respond to a warming ocean, and which regions face the greatest risk of increased ice discharge. The project employs a wide variety of methodologies from field surveys of the Antarctic ice sheet to computer modelling of complex ocean-ice sheet interactions. The scientific insights gained through this research are helping to improve the accuracy of ice-sheet computer models, and provide more reliable projections of future sea level.

Partner: Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE-CRC)
CPOM role Scientific input to the Antarctic Ice Sheet workstream.

Start date: 2013

CryoSat Follow-on SAR Trade-off

Partners: ESA

Start date: 2015

SEOM SPICE

iSTAR (NERC Ice Sheet Stability Programme)

Description: iSTAR is a suite of four research projects aiming to establish the causes of rapid ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet to enable more accurate predictions of future sea level rise. CPOM is involved in iSTAR-C and iSTAR-D, which are investigating the Pine Island, Thwaites and Union Glaciers. iSTAR-C (Dynamic Ice) aims to understand the processes that are responsible for transmitting the effect of thinning of the Pine Island Glacier’s floating ice shelf upstream; iSTAR-D is capturing ice-based measurements of the Amundsen sector ice streams that will help to reconstruct missing data missing from historic satellite records, providing a more comprehensive picture of mass ice loss.

Partners: BAS, NERC, NOC, UCL, Universities of East Anglia (UEA), St Andrews, Southampton, Washington, Cambridge, Newcastle, Bristol, Edinburgh, Durham, Reading

CPOM role: Expertise in satellite altimetry, interferometry, land ice modelling and ice velocity. Leadership of iSTAR D.

URL: https://www.istar.ac.uk/

ESA-STSE CryoSat GLITter Project

ESA-STSE CryoSat Cryotop

NOAA Arctic Gravity Models