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Improving Antarctic tide models by assimilation of ICESat laser altimetry over ice shelves
Author(s) -
Padman Laurie,
Erofeeva Svetlana Y.,
Fricker Helen Amanda
Publication year - 2008
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 - 10.1029/2008gl035592
Subject(s) - altimeter , ocean tide , data assimilation , mean squared error , satellite , geology , tidal model , ice cloud , elevation (ballistics) , environmental science , remote sensing , climatology , meteorology , geodesy , oceanography , geography , mathematics , statistics , geometry , aerospace engineering , engineering
Assimilation of laser altimeter data from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) significantly improves the accuracy of ocean tide models for the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS). For the most energetic tidal harmonic, K 1 , assimilation reduces the root‐mean‐square error (RMSE) between the model and a set of 16 independent tide records on and near the RIS from 6.0 to 2.8 cm, and the combined RMSE for the six most energetic tidal harmonics from 7.7 to 5.4 cm. When only the six most recent and highest‐quality tide records are considered, the combined RMSE is 4.8 cm. This value is close to the uncertainty expected from tidal analyses of the short (∼1–2 month) validation records, indicating that assessing further improvements in tide model accuracy will require development of a higher quality validation data set.