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We offer a view of the Antarctic sea ice cover from lidar (ICESat-2) and radar (CryoSat-2) altimetry, with retrievals of freeboard, snow depth, and ice thickness that span an 8-month winter between 1 April and 16 November 2019. Snow depths are from freeboard differences. The multiyear ice observed in the West Weddell sector is the thickest, with a mean sector thickness > 2 m. The thinnest ice is found near polynyas (Ross Sea and Ronne Ice Shelf) where new ice areas are exported seaward and entrained in the surrounding ice cover. For all months, the results suggest that ∼ 65 %–70 % of the total freeboard is comprised of snow. The remarkable mechanical convergence in coastal Amundsen Sea, associated with onshore winds, was captured by ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2. We observe a corresponding correlated increase in freeboards, snow depth, and ice thickness. While the spatial patterns in the freeboard, snow depth, and thickness composites are as expected, the observed seasonality in these variables is rather weak. This most likely results from competing processes (snowfall, snow redistribution, snow and ice formation, ice deformation, and basal growth and melt) that contribute to uncorrelated changes in the total and radar freeboards. Evidence points to biases in CryoSat-2 estimates of ice freeboard of at least a few centimeters from high salinity snow (> 10) in the basal layer resulting in lower or higher snow depth and ice thickness retrievals, although the extent of these areas cannot be established in the current data set. Adjusting CryoSat-2 freeboards by 3–6 cm gives a circumpolar ice volume of 17 900–15 600 km 3 in October, for an average thickness of ∼ 1.29–1.13 m. Validation of Antarctic sea ice parameters remains a challenge, as there are no seasonally and regionally diverse data sets that could be used to assess these large-scale satellite retrievals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The airborne Operation IceBridge and spaceborne CryoSat-2 missions observe polar sea ice at different spatial and temporal scales as well as with different sensor suites. Comparison of data products from IceBridge and CryoSat-2 is complicated by the fact that they use different geophysical corrections: reference ellipsoid, geoid model, tide model, and atmospheric corrections to derive surface elevation and sea-ice freeboard. In this paper, we compare sea-ice surface elevation and freeboard using eight coincident CryoSat-2, Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), and Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) observations with direct IceBridge underflights of CryoSat-2 ground tracks. We apply identical geophysical corrections to CryoSat-2 and IceBridge data to eliminate elevation biases due to these differences and focus on differences due to retracker performance. The IceBridge ATM and LVIS elevation and freeboard and Snow Radar snow depth data sets are averaged to each CryoSat-2 footprint for comparison. With snow depth measurements, we are able to compare elevations and freeboards at the snow/ice interface for five different CryoSat-2 retrackers (ESA, GSFCv1, AWI, JPL, and GSFCv2) and IceBridge. The overall mean of freeboard differences between GSFCv2, ESA, AWI, JPL retrackers, and ATM are in agreement within 0.05 m. However, the five different CryoSat-2 retrackers show distinct differences in mean elevation over leads and over floes. This suggests that the physical interpretation of the different retrackers needs to be considered depending on usage, for example, elevations from CryoSat-2 retrackers need to be carefully calibrated before comparing with elevation from other satellites for long-term surface elevation trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite radar altimeter (RA) measurements are important for continued monitoring of rapidly changing polar regions. In 2010, the European Space Agency launched CryoSat-2 carrying SIRAL, a Ku-band RA with objectives of determining the thickness and extent of sea ice and the topography of the ice sheets. One difficulty with Ku-band radar surveys over snow and ice is unknown penetration of RA signal into snow cover. Improving our understanding of the interactions of RA signals with snow and ice is needed to produce accurate elevation products. To this end, we developed a low-power, ultra wideband (12-18 GHz) RA for airborne surveys to provide fine resolution measurements capable of detecting both scattering from the surface and layers within sea ice and ice sheets. These measurements provide a means of identifying the dominant scattering location of lower resolution RA measurements comparable to satellite-based instruments. We generated two products: a full-bandwidth waveform (FBW) to identify scattering targets at fine resolution and a reduced bandwidth waveform (RBW) to represent conventional RA measurements. Retrackers are used to generate height estimates over various surface conditions for comparisons. Over ice sheets, the leading-edge tracker provided consistent ice-surface elevation measurements between the FBW and RBW results; however, there were significant differences between the results from the centroid tracker. Over sea ice, the location of the dominant return between the results from snow-covered sea ice is highly variable. This paper provides an overview of RA surveys in polar regions, a description of the CReSIS system, and a discussion of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]