Sentinel-1b Comparison Project
Validating the accuracy of Sentinel-1b microwave backscatter SAR for tracking temperate alpine glacier velocities
(In Progress)
ABSTRACT
This project, advised by Dr. Joshua Kelly (CalState LA), is concerned with spatially and temporally accurate ground truthing of ice offset and speckle tracking used to calculate ice stream velocities worldwide using ESA's Sentinel-1b satellite. S1b contains a microwave backscatter synthetic aperture radar sensor system capable of active remote sensing of glacier through cloud cover and darkness (to differentiate it from Landsat-based offset tracking used in GoLive and Its_Live). However, due to high melt-water concentrations within temperate snow pack, as well as near surface ice lensing, albedo can change enough to make velocity tracking unreliable. This study aims to quantify the error in S1b ice velocity tracking by using sub cm GNSS measurements with observations during nadir flyover. Initial findings show statistical significant low correlation between GPS and S1b measurements during both rainstorms and bluebird flyover windows. Continued study in 2022 will look to the historic record of GNSS measurements during the Sentinel-1 era to correlate observations and quantify error during recorded conditions to improve world-wide accuracy in temperate glacier regions.