Two Traverses for the Assessment of Satellite and Airborne Altimetry
over the Interiors of Ice Sheets
Abstract
Two traverses have been conducted for validation of the NASA Ice, Cloud,
and land Satellite 2 on the flat interiors of the Antarctic and
Greenland ice sheets. GNSS data collected on three separate 88S
Traverses intersect 20% of the ICESat-2 reference ground tracks and
have height errors of 5.6 and 8.0 cm. GNSS data from the monthly Summit
Traverse in Greenland have 0.9 cm of bias and 5.7 cm precision. Data
from these traverses were used to assess heights from ICESat-2,
CryoSat-2, and Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM). ICESat-2 heights have
better than ±2.9 cm bias and better than ±6.7 cm precision. ATM heights
have better than 9.3 cm bias and better than ±9.6 cm precision.
CryoSat-2 heights have more than 20 cm of bias and more than ±40 cm
precision. These best-case results are from the ice-sheet interiors but
provide a characterization of the quality of satellite and airborne
altimetry.