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Two Traverses for the Assessment of Satellite and Airborne Altimetry over the Interiors of Ice Sheets
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  • Kelly M. Brunt,
  • Benjamin E. Smith,
  • Tyler Clark Sutterley,
  • Nathan Timothy Kurtz,
  • Thomas Neumann
Kelly M. Brunt
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Benjamin E. Smith
Un. Washington
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Tyler Clark Sutterley
University of Washington
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Nathan Timothy Kurtz
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Thomas Neumann
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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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.