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Topography and penetration of the Greenland Ice Sheet measured with Airborne SAR Interferometry
Author(s) -
Dall Jørgen,
Madsen Søren Nørvang,
Keller Kristian,
Forsberg Rene
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2000gl011787
Subject(s) - geology , firn , snow , altimeter , remote sensing , interferometry , synthetic aperture radar , digital elevation model , radar , geodesy , ice sheet , geomorphology , optics , physics , telecommunications , computer science
A digital elevation model (DEM) of the Geikie ice cap in East Greenland has been generated from interferometric C‐band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data acquired with the airborne EMISAR system. GPS surveyed radar reflectors and an airborne laser altimeter supplemented the experiment. The accuracy of the SAR DEM is about 1.5m. The mean difference between the laser heights and the SAR heights changes from 0 m in the soaked zone to a maximum of 13 m in the percolation zone. This is explained by the fact that the snow in the soaked zone contains liquid water which attenuates the radar signals, while the transparency of the firn in the percolation zone makes volume scattering dominate at the higher elevations. For the first time, the effective penetration has been measured directly as the difference between the interferometric heights and reference heights obtained with GPS and laser altimetry.