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Tutorial

Comparing SWOT HR Elevation to ICESat-2

Authors
Affiliations
Colorado School of Mines
University of Maryland
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Colorado School of Mines

Overview

In this tutorial, we will plot NASA/CNES’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) High Rate (HR) and Low Rate (LR) coverage over Antarctica, then compare SWOT LR raster elevations to NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) ATL06 land ice elevations over the Bach Ice Shelf (Antarctic Peninsula), verifying correct application of geophysical corrections.

Visualize SWOT coverage over Antarctica

Building on the previous SWOT HR data access tutorial where we learned how to find and open SWOT data, we’ll now focus on determining what SWOT HR and LR coverage exists over Antarctica for our comparison to ICESat-2. In this step, you’ll create an interactive map of SWOT coverage over Antarctica.

Package imports and data paths needed to get started

Compare SWOT and ICESat-2 elevations on Bach Ice Shelf

We can see that there is HR coverage over Bach Ice Shelf so we will compare SWOT heights there to ICESat-2.

ICESat-2 is a photon-counting green laser altimeter. We can make this comparison because when measuring snow and ice surface heights, both SWOT (Ka band radar) and ICESat-2 (photon counting green laser) are considered surface sensing instruments. They penetrate to nearly equivalent depths into snow and ice, though Ka band radar likely penetrates millimeters to a few centimeters deeper into dry snow than ICESat-2 does. They are likely more indistinguishable for wet snow. More information about ICEsat-2 data products, mission, and tutorials is available in the ICESat-2 Cookbook.

ICESat-2 laser configuration (from Smith and others, 2019)

ICESat-2 laser configuration (from Smith and others, 2019)

We will use what we learned in the SWOT HR data access tutorial to compare the SWOT_L2_HR_Raster_100m product to ICESat-2’s Land Ice Height, Version 7 (ATL06) over a rift on Bach Ice Shelf.

To demonstrate different earthaccess search methods, we search for a specific granule of SWOT data found using Earthdata search and we search for all ICESAT-2 tracks in a specified bounding box and manually pick one ICESat-2 track that intersects the SWOT swath at our region of interest.

Imports, paths, and constants to get started

Preview and choose ATL06 tracks to compare with SWOT

We’ll plot the atl06 candidates on top of the SWOT swath and the MOA background map.

Use the is2_start/is2_end indices to step through candidates until you find a track that best crosses your area of interest (e.g., the crevasse field). The cell prints the granule filename and beam for each plotted candidate so you can note the one you want to use in the next step.

Apply comparable geophysics & interpolate SWOT along-track

We bring heights to a consistent reference, then interpolate the SWOT corrected elevations to the advected ICESat-2 points

References
  1. Depoorter, M. A., Bamber, J. L., Griggs, J., Lenaerts, J. T. M., Ligtenberg, S. R. M., van den Broeke, M. R., & Moholdt, G. (2013). Antarctic masks (ice-shelves, ice-sheet, and islands), link to shape file. PANGAEA. 10.1594/PANGAEA.819147
  2. Smith, B., Fricker, H. A., Holschuh, N., Gardner, A. S., Adusumilli, S., Brunt, K. M., Csatho, B., Harbeck, K., Huth, A., Neumann, T., Nilsson, J., & Siegfried, M. R. (2019). Land ice height-retrieval algorithm for NASA’s ICESat-2 photon-counting laser altimeter. Remote Sensing of Environment, 233, 111352. 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111352
  3. Erofeeva, S., Greene, C. A., Howard, S. L., Padman, L., & Sutterley, T. (2024). CATS2008_v2023: Circum-Antarctic Tidal Simulation 2008, version 2023. U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) Data Center. 10.15784/601772
  4. LEGOS/CNRS/CLS. (1992). Dynamic Atmospheric Correction. CNES. 10.24400/527896/A01-2022.001