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ICESat‐derived inland water surface spot heights
Author(s) -
O'Loughlin Fiachra E.,
Neal Jeffrey,
Yamazaki Dai,
Bates Paul D.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2015wr018237
Subject(s) - remote sensing , satellite , environmental science , altimeter , water level , surface water , transect , spurious relationship , geology , radar , geodesy , geography , statistics , mathematics , telecommunications , oceanography , cartography , aerospace engineering , environmental engineering , computer science , engineering
Accurate measurement of water surface height is key to many fields in hydrology and limnology. Satellite radar and laser altimetry have been shown to be useful means of obtaining such data where no ground gauging stations exist, and the accuracy of different satellite instruments is now reasonably well understood. Past validation studies have shown water surface height data from the ICESat instrument to have the highest vertical accuracy (mean absolute errors of ∼10 cm for ICESat, compared, for example, with ∼28 cm from Envisat), yet no freely available source of processed ICESat data currently exists for inland water bodies. Here we present a database of processed and quality checked ICESat‐derived inland water surface heights (IWSH) for water bodies greater than 3 arc sec (∼92 m at the equator) in width. Four automated methods for removing spurious observations or outliers were investigated, along with the impact of using different water masks. We find that the best performing method ensures that observations used are completely surrounded by water in the SRTM Water Body data. Using this method for removing spurious observations, we estimate transect‐averaged water surface heights at 587,292 unique locations from 2003 to 2009, with the number of locations proportional to the size of the river.