Session Recommendations: Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves – Elevation and Techniques
- Long, multi-decadal record of satellite altimetry missions must be continued. Exciting new missions (e.g. CRISTAL) and proposed missions (e.g. EDGE) that the community and space agency should support through to launch
- Now possible to isolate seasonal surface elevation change signal from long-term trend. Will help us study new modes of variability and drivers of change on short timescales
- Use AI/ML methods to build new generation of altimetry retrackers. Space agency needs to invest in build of these and testing their performance in varied terrain
- There is a huge risk that there will be a gap between CryoSat-2 and CRISTAL missions. CryoSat2 lifetime should be extended if possible to bridge this gap. Community would like a minimum of one year overlap between the two missions
- Use airborne campaigns to bridge gap between CS2 and CRISTAL if mission lifetimes cannot be overlapped
- Use crevasse maps from SAR to remove elevation data in crevasses – this creates noise in SEC measurements in rough terrain (but must be careful with mass balance estimates if you remove crevasses)
- New Sentinel-3 “AMPLI” Products will be disseminated by ESA by end of 2024. Compared to ground segment processing, the performance is significantly improved thanks to a new relocation method at POCA. Recommendation to further assess the effect of snow volume scattering in Sentinel-3 SAR Ku band.
- Continue exploring the possibility of deriving surface densities and vertical heterogeneity from CryoSat-2 and SARAL waveforms and SMOS brightness temperatures
Chairs: Anna Hogg (Uni. Leeds), Aleah Sommers (Dartmouth College)