UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, SCHOOL OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT (GB)
SPICE (Sentinel-3 Performance improvement for ICE sheets) is a 2-year study, which began in September 2015 and has been funded by ESA’s SEOM (Scientific Exploitation of Operational Missions) program. The project aims to contribute to the development and evaluation of novel SAR altimetry processing methodologies over ice sheets, primarily using dedicated CryoSat-2 SAR acquisitions made at several sites in Antarctica and in Greenland. SPICE developed novel algorithms to address four high level objectives: 1) Assess and improve Delay-Doppler altimeter processing for ice sheets; 2) Assess and develop SAR waveform retrackers for ice sheets; 3) Evaluate the performance of SAR altimetry relative to conventional pulse limited altimetry; 4) Assess the impact on SAR altimeter measurements of radar wave interaction with the snowpack.
