Simultaneous Determination of Horizontal and Vertical Accuracy of ICESat-2 in McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

Abstract. This contribution presents an assessment of the horizontal and vertical accuracy of altimetry observations collected by NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission. We selected the terrain-matching method to determine the position of laser altimeter profiles within a precisely known surface, represented by a digital elevation model (DEM). We took this classical approach a step further, approximated the DEM by planar surface patches, and calculated the optimal position of the laser profile by minimizing the square sum of the elevation differences between reference DEMs and ICESat-2 profiles. We found the highly accurate DEMs of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (DV), Antarctica, ideal for this research because of their stable landscape and rugged topography. Here, we summarize recent improvements of this approach to estimate the horizontal and vertical accuracy of ICESat-2 observations and assess the quality of new ICESat-2 data releases.