Data Announcement
  • Sea ice

Data set update: IceBridge Narrow Swath ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength

The IceBridge Narrow Swath ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength, Version 2 data set has been updated from 03 April 2019 through 16 May 2019 to include data from the 2019 Arctic campaign at the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC). This data set contains spot elevation measurements of Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic sea ice acquired by the NASA Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) narrow-swath instrumentation.

Data disclaimer:
As compared with most other Operation IceBridge ATM laser altimetry datasets, this particular dataset has certain limitations in accuracy that result from a recently identified problem related to the application of the solid Earth tide correction in the data-processing stage. This error can cause long-wavelength errors in elevations that are less than a decimeter in magnitude and which vary in both space and time. The error wavelength is typically hundreds of kilometers, so it should not significantly affect most analyses of this dataset, but it can be smaller because it depends on the number and position of base stations used for the trajectory solution and on other factors including moon phase. The error only affects the 2018 DC-8 Antarctic and 2019 P-3 Arctic Spring ATM datasets published at NSIDC. Resolution of this error is in progress, and a future version of this dataset will eliminate it. The user should consider the elevation issue in any scientific interpretation or other use of the dataset. Users are requested to report their findings about data quality to NSIDC User Services, to be forwarded to the ATM team, for information and comment before publication or reporting elsewhere.

Data Set DOI: https://doi.org/10.5067/CXEQS8KVIXEI