Ice-sheet surface elevation change from crossover of ENVISAT data

Abstract

Understanding the current state of the polar ice sheets is critical for determining their contribution to sea-level rise and predicting their response to climate change. Surface elevation time series especially can be used to study ice-sheet dynamics and the mass or volume balance of the ice sheets, which are relevant to global climate change and sea-level rise. During the last two decades, satellite radar altimetry or airborne laser altimetry could obtain accuracy by an order of magnitude greater than the traditional airborne barometric altimetry, which has a precision of typically several tens of meters at best and only a limited coverage. The widest coverage comes from satellites, especially from the ERS1/2 and ENVISAT, which extends to 81.5° of latitude, covering almost all of Greenland and most of Antarctica. In this paper, an algorithm for time series analysis based on crossover was used to obtain 4-year (September 2002–March 2007) ice-sheet elevation changes from ENVISAT data. The height of the whole Antarctic ice sheet has a decline of about 0.4 ± 0.43 cm from September 2002 to March 2007. The time series data present clearly a seasonal and annual signal feature; that the ice sheet thickens in March. From the time series data, the seasonal and annual signal can be observed clearly.