Greenland Ice Sheet surface roughness from Ku- and Ka-band radar altimetry surface echo strengths

Scanlan, Kirk M.; Rutishauser, Anja; Simonsen, Sebastian B.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1221-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1221-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1221-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 3

Research article

|

14 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 14 Mar 2025

Greenland Ice Sheet surface roughness from Ku- and Ka-band radar altimetry surface echo strengths

Kirk M. Scanlan, Anja Rutishauser, and Sebastian B. Simonsen

Data sets

Data for "Observing the near-surface properties of the Greenland Ice sheet" Kirk Michael Scanlan et al. https://doi.org/10.11583/DTU.21333291.v1

CryoVEx/Icesat-2 Spring 2019 Campaign ESA https://doi.org/10.5270/ESA-bde7d74

CryoVEx-KAREN 2017 Campaign: ESA CryoVEx/KAREN and EU ICE-ARC 2017 - Arctic field campaign with combined Ku/Ka-band radar and laser altimeters, together with extensive in situ measurements over sea- and land ice ESA https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-enocas0

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land Ice Height. (ATL06, Version 5) B. Smith et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL06.005

ArcticDEM, Version 3 C. Porter et al. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OHHUKH

Model code and software

Planetary landing-zone reconnaissance using ice-penetrating radar data: Concept validation in Antarctica (https://github.com/cgrima/rsr) C. Grima et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2014.07.018

Short summary

An ice sheet's surface modulates its response to climate change, and it is therefore critical to monitor how it evolves through time. Here, we investigate novel measurements of Greenland surface roughness based on the strength of reflected local airborne and pan-Greenland satellite radar signals. These measurements respond to roughness at scales typically larger than those considered in mass balance modelling while highlighting the scale dependency of surface roughness that is often overlooked.