Antarctic/Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from high resolution ‘swath mode’ CryoSat-2 altimetry data

This project offers an exciting opportunity to work at the interface of climate and space science, making an important contribution to international efforts to study the effects and impacts of climate change. Importantly, it is likely to include a field campaign on the Greenland Ice Sheet to undertake vital work to ensure that future estimates of ice loss are correct.
Based within the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), the project will be co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). As a result there will be opportunities to attend international ESA meetings and engage with a wide range of scientific collaborators.
During this project you will use Earth Observation data acquired by satellites such as ESA’s CryoSat-2, to assess how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are contributing to sea level rise (SLR), and how this sea level contribution varies spatially and temporally across the globe. This will be achieved by exploiting super-high resolution satellite observations of surface elevation change, generated using the novel ‘swath mode’ processing technique.
In addition, you will collect field data and use it to validate satellite measurements from CryoSat-2, ESA’s satellite mission dedicated to monitoring the polar regions. This is needed to assess how CryoSat-2’s measurements are distorted by climatic extremes, and therefore to improve current estimates of ice loss and its corresponding SLR contribution.

Objectives
The aim of this project is to perform a detailed analysis of high resolution ‘swath mode’ altimetry data acquired by the CryoSat-2 satellite between 2010 and the present day, to assess ice sheet elevation, and the rate of elevation change. Specifically, you will:
1. Generate an understanding of the swath mode processing technique and dataset.
2. Produce a high spatial resolution dataset of the elevation, and elevation change of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, to provide an improved estimate of its present day contribution to sea level rise.
3. Make a significant contribution to the ESA STSE CryoTop Follow On project by identifying and then investigating investigating a subglacial lake drainage event in Antarctica using the high resolution ‘swath mode’ dataset.