Validation of Arctic Summer Sea Ice Heights with Space and Airborne Lidar Technologies

Explore the validation of Arctic summer sea ice heights using space and airborne lidar technologies in this 57-minute conference talk. Delve into the collaborative effort between the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin and NASA to evaluate the accuracy of ICESat-2 ATLAS measurements. Learn about the airborne data acquisition campaign conducted in northwestern Greenland and northeastern Canada, utilizing the Leica Chiroptera-4x airborne lidar system and NASA's Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor (LVIS). Discover the challenges faced during the missions, including low flight altitude requirements and weather conditions. Examine the preliminary results showing robust correspondence between Chiroptera NIR and ATLAS-07 sensors for measuring sea ice surface heights. Gain insights into ongoing efforts to quantify surface height accuracies, determine melt pond depths, and apply machine learning methods for predicting sea ice surface heights in areas without coincident data.

Intro
Motivation - Science questions
Introduction Materials
NASA's LVIS
Leica Chiroptera-4X (CHIR) airborne lidar system
Survey aircraft: N95NA - Gulfstream GV-5
Project challenges
Airborne missions
Thule AB ramp - slant range calibration
Height comparison - QC methodology
Geophysical models applied
Sea ice drift: [Observed wind speed]
Sea ice drift calculation
Sea ice drift vector computation [Copernicus ISO SAF - radar & InSAR]
[WIP] Machine learning: Predict missing coincident sea ice heights
[WIP]: Automated melt ponds feature detection and depth analysis