Chinese Journal of Polar Research ›› 2023, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (3): 383-391.DOI: 10.13679/j.jdyj.20220413

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A 1-km digital elevation model of the Antarctic ice sheet inferred from ICESat-2 altimetry

Fan Yipei1, Wang Zemin2,3Zhang Baojun2,3   

  1. 1The State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing,Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China;
    2Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China;
    3Key Laboratory of Polar Environment Monitoring and Public Governance (Wuhan University),Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
  • Online:2023-09-30 Published:2023-09-30

Abstract:

A digital elevation model (DEM) describes the shape of an ice sheet. It is a particularly essential data to study the Antarctic ice sheet. However, because of climate change, the West Antarctic ice sheet has suffered drastic melting that induced marked modifications of its DEM changes. Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is the latest-generation satellite laser altimetry. It was launched in 2018 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The onboard Advanced Topographical Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) acquires high-density, high accuracy observations of the Antarctic ice sheet. In this study, a new DEM of the Antarctic ice sheet established by spatio-temporal fitting of ICESat-2 elevation measurements onto a high-resolution grid with a cell size of 1 km×1 km. The median, root-mean-square and decile interval of the differences between the ICESat-2 DEM derived in this study and IceBridge elevation data were –0.45 m, 17.51 m, and 17.93 m, respectively. In different slope bands, the ICESat-2 DEM accuracy was higher than that of a previous DEM also derivedo from ICESat-2 data.

Key words:

digital elevation model, ICESat-2, Antarctic ice sheet