FIELD VALIDATION OF ICESAT-2 DATA ALONG CHINARE ROUTE IN EAST ANTARCTICA

Abstract. A field validation of the ICESat-2 elevation data has been conducted along the CHINARE (CHINese Antarctic Research Expedition) route near the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica from December 2019 to February 2020. The study area covers a 520 km traverse from the coastal Zhongshan Station to the inland Taishan Station. We deployed two roof-mounted GNSS receivers to collect elevation data along the traverse and reduced them to the ice surface height with measured boresight parameters. The comparison of the ICESat-2 data (Release 003) with the high-precision ground-based GNSS along the traverse shows that the elevations of ATL06 ice surface products are accurate to 1.5 cm with 9.1 cm precision, and the elevations of ATL03 photon events are accurate to 4.3 cm with 8.5 cm precision. The validation results indicated high accuracy of 1.5–4.3 cm of ICESat-2 data, which provides the potentials to observe and evaluate the low-level mass changes in East Antarctica. The methodology and hardware system can be improved to execute a continuous assessment of ICESat-2 data in the following mission period.