Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 3700: Validation of Glacier Topographic Acquisitions from an Airborne Single-Pass Interferometer

We present the first validation results of the operational sensor, collected in 2013 over glaciers in Alaska and followed by more exhaustive collections from Greenland in 2016 and 2017. In Alaska, overlapping flight-tracks were mosaicked to mitigate potential residual trends across-track and the resultant maps are validated with lidar. Furthermore, repeat acquisitions of Columbia Glacier collected with a three day separation indicate excellent stability and repeatability. Commencing 2016, GLISTIN-A has circumnavigated Greenland for 4 consecutive years. Due to flight hour limitations, overlapping swaths were not flown. In 2016, comparison with airborne lidar data finds that residual systematic errors exhibit evenly distributed small slopes (all less than 10 millidegrees) and nadir biases were typically less than 1 m. Similarly 2017 data exhibited up to meter-scale nadir biases and evenly distributed residual slopes with a standard deviation of ~10 millidegrees). All satisfied the science accuracy requirements of the Greenland campaigns (3 m accuracy across an 8 km swath).

Source: Sensors - August 25, 2019 Category: Biotechnology Authors: Delwyn Moller Scott Hensley Jeremie Mouginot Joshua Willis Xiaoqing Wu Christopher Larsen Eric Rignot Ronald Muellerschoen Ala Khazendar Tags: Article Source Type: research