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Supraglacial lake bathymetry automatically derived from ICESat-2 constraining lake depth estimates from multi-source satellite imagery
  • Rajashree Datta,
  • Bert Wouters
Rajashree Datta
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Bert Wouters
Utrecht University
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Abstract

We introduce an algorithm “Watta”, which automatically calculates supraglacial lake bathymmetry along tracks of the ICESat-2 laser altimeter. Watta uses photon heights estimated by the ICESat-2 ATL03 product and extracts supraglacial lake surface, bottom, corrected depth and (sub)surface ice cover on a lake. These measurements are used to constrain empirical estimates of lake depth from satellite imagery, which were thus far dependent on sparse sets of in-situ measurements for calibration. Imagery sources include Landsat OLI, Sentinel-2 and high-resolution Planet Labs PlanetScope and SkySat data, used here for the first time to calculate supraglacial lake depths. The algorithm was developed and tested using a set of 46 lakes near Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshavn) glacier in Western Greenland. Our results suggest that the use of multiple imagery sources (both publicly-available and commercial) in combination with altimetry-based depths, can move towards capturing the evolution of supraglacial hydrology at improved spatial and temporal scales.
12 Nov 2021Published in The Cryosphere volume 15 issue 11 on pages 5115-5132. 10.5194/tc-15-5115-2021