We report on a previously undocumented range error in NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) that degrades elevation precision and introduces a small but significant elevation trend over the ICESat mission period. This range error (the Gaussian-Centroid or “G-C” offset) varies on a shot-to-shot basis and exhibits increasing scatter when laser transmit energies fall below 20 mJ....

[1] The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) provides a globally-distributed data set well suited for evaluating the vertical accuracy of Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation models (DEMs). The horizontal error (2.4 ± 7.3 m) and vertical error (0.04 ± 0.13 m per degree of incidence angle) for the ICESat data used ...

ICESat satellite laser altimetry provides an unprecedented set of global elevation measurements of the Earth, yielding great detail over ice, land and ocean surfaces. Coastal regions in particular, including seamless land-water transitions, benefit from the small footprint (50 to 90 m), high resolution (40 Hz, ~170 m along-track), and high precision (2 to 3 cm) of ICESat. We discuss the perform...

The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) in its 8 day repeat orbit mode provided data not only on the along-track surface slope, but also on the cross-track surface slope from adjacent repeat ground tracks. During the first 36 days of operation, four to five such repeat orbits occurred within 1 km in the cross-track direction. This provided an opportunity to use ICESat data to measu...

[1] Here we use Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)-derived elevations and surface characteristics to investigate the Malaspina Glacier of southern Alaska. Although there is significant elevation variability between ICESat tracks on this glacier, we were able to discern general patterns in surface elevation change by using a regional digital elevation model (DEM) as a reference sur...

Traditional glaciological mass balance measurements of mountain glaciers are a demanding and cost intensive task. In this study, we combine data from the Ice Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICESat) acquired between 2003 and 2009 with air and space borne Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) in order to derive surface elevation changes of the Grosser Aletschgletscher in the Swiss Alps. Three different ...

Satellite optical images and altimetry data are two major data sources used in Antarctic research. The integration use of these two datasets is expected to provide more accurate and higher quality products, during which data registration is the first issue that needs to be solved. This paper presents an alternative approach for the registration of high-resolution satellite optical images and IC...

7 Lidar remote sensing from three platforms – ground, airborne, and spaceborne – has 8 the capability to acquire direct three-dimensional measurements of the forest canopy that 9 are useful for estimating a variety of forest inventory parameters, including tree height, 10 volume, and biomass, and also for deriving useful information for characterizing wildlife 11 habitat or forest fuels. 12 The...

The Seal Nunataks ice shelf (SNIS, ∼743 km in 2013) is an unofficial name for a remnant area between the former Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves off the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula. Analyses using Landsat 7 ETM+ and Terra ASTER images from 2001 to 13 and ICESat altimetry from 2003 to 09 show it has retreated and thinned following the Larsen A (1995) and Larsen B (2002) disintegrations. De...

NASA launched its Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) in January 2003. The primary goal of this laser altimeter mission is to provide determination of volumetric changes in the ice sheets, specifically in Antarctica and Greenland. The instrument performance requirements are driven by the scientific goal of determining a change in elevation on the centimetre level over the course of...