ESA CryoVEx 2014 - Airborne ASIRAS radar and laser scanner measurements during 2014 CryoVEx campaign in the Arctic

This report outlines the airborne field operations with the ESA airborne Ku‐band interferometric radar (ASIRAS), coincident airborne laser scanner (ALS) and vertical photography to acquire data over sea‐ and land ice along validation sites and CryoSat‐2 ground tracks. The airborne campaign was coordinated by DTU Space using the Norlandair Twin Otter (TF‐POF).

The campaign consisted of two experiment periods: Mid‐march to early April and late April to mid‐May with focus on sea ice and land ice, respectively. The sea ice measurements covered several validation sites with sea ice camps located in the Beaufort Sea lead by US office of Naval Research (ONR) and north of Greenland as a dedicated ESA CryoVEx initiative.

In addition, selected CryoSat‐2 ground tracks were under‐flown in the Lincoln Sea from CFS Alert, North of Greenland and Svalbard from St. Nord and Longyearbyen. Several of the flights in the Beaufort and Lincoln Sea were coordinated with Uni. of York (UY) lead Basler aircraft towing an electromagnetic (AEM/EM bird) sounder to obtain sea ice thickness and Operation IceBridge (OIB) NASA P‐3 carrying a variety of instruments for sea ice and snow retrievals.

Land ice measurements were acquired over the Greenland ice sheet (the EGIG line and selected CryoSat‐ 2 ground tracks), together with Austfonna and Devon ice caps. At Austfonna and Devon ice caps ground teams measured ice and snow properties, and raised corner reflectors acting as a surface reference point in order to estimate the penetration depth of the ASIRAS radar.

An opportunity site on the Greenland Ice Sheet was surveyed near Jakobshavn Isbræ. No other ground experiments were coordinated with the CryoVEx campaing on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The CryoVEx 2014 campaign was a success and the processed data is of high quality. The data set includes 13 CryoSat underflights covering distances from 25‐560 km.

The preliminary comparisons to CryoSat‐2 data show the potential of the extensive dataset.