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Measuring the radar backscatter characteristics of glacier ice at different frequencies and incidence angles is fundamental to predicting the glacier mapping performance of a sensor. However, such measurements at 94 GHz do not exist. To address this knowledge gap, we collected 94 GHz radar backscatter data from the surface of Rhônegletscher in Switzerland using the 2nd generation All-weather Volcano Topography Imaging Sensor (AVTIS2). We determine the mean normalised radar cross section \(\left(\sigma^0_{\text{mean}}\right)\) to be -9.9 dB. The distribution closely follows a log-normal distribution with a high goodness of fit (R2=0.99) which suggests that radar backscatter is diffuse and driven by surface roughness. Further, we quantified the uncertainty of AVTIS2 3D point clouds to be 1.30-3.72 m, which is smaller than other ground-based glacier surface mapping radars. These results demonstrate that glacier surfaces are an efficient scattering target at 94 GHz, hence demonstrating the suitability of millimeter-wave radar for glacier monitoring.

Supp. Data 1: This spreadsheet provides the raw data used in the article, specifically relating to seagrass cover, cover change, carbon loss, and mapping accuracies. All numbers were calculated in ArcGIS 10.5.; Supp. Data 2: Field points associated with the ground-truthing survey conducted in 2017. All points are recorded in latitude and longitude, and projected in WGS1984. The seagrass column represents presence (1) or absence (0).; Supp. Data 3: Polygons shapefiles of the four seagrass maps; 1986 (LT5), 2000 (LE7), 2016 (LC8), and 2016 (S2A), provided in zipped file. Each shapefile is projected onto WGS184 UTM Zone 37S.; Supp. Data 4: This document provides information relating to the aforementioned manuscript. All information related to the accompanying data files, and is provided to ensure the results are reproducible.