Summary. The overarching goal of the proposed project is to analyze icesat-2 ICE surface data for glaciological regions that are representative of different surface types and of different types of…

This federal contract award, valued at $382,307.00, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Regents of the University of Colorado, doing business as the University of Colorado, to analyze data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission. The overarching goal is to evaluate ICESat-2's capability to observe and measure changes in the cryosphere, such as glacial acceleration and melt processes, which are critical to understanding sea-level rise. The University of Colorado will use a density-dimension algorithm it has developed to process the high-resolution ICESat-2 surface height data and compare it against airborne data from an Arctic glacier. The work will also involve implementing the algorithm operationally and analyzing initial ICESat-2 data for insights on melt and acceleration. This contract is not associated with a set-aside designation.

Summary. The overarching goal of the proposed project is to analyze icesat-2 ICE surface data for glaciological regions that are representative of different surface types and of different types of glacial acceleration and melt processes, and thus to evaluate and demonstrate the capability of icesat-2 to provide observations that aid in solving urgent research questions related to dynamic and climatic changes in the cryosphere. As is well-known, a multi-beam micro-pulse photon-counting laser altimeter was selected as the instrument for the icesat-2 mission, because the resultant data can be expected to capture the spatial and temporal variability in ICE-surface height that is required to understand those processes that drive rapid changes in the cryosphere (abdalati ET AL., 2010; markus ET AL., 2017), foremost melt events and glacial acceleration. Glacial acceleration is the largest source of uncertainty in assessment of sea-level rise (SLR) in the current realm of climatic warming, according to the fifth assessment report (AR 5) of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) (stocker ET AL., 2013). In 2012, unprecedented large melt events that affected much of the greenland ICE sheet drove home the notion that the greenland ICE sheet has already entered a different realm regarding surface mass balance (SMB) (nghiem ET AL., 2012; hall ET AL., 2013; tedesco ET AL., 2013). As a means to fully use the measurement capabilities of the micro-pulse photon-counting technology, the PI has developed a density-dimension algorithm for ICE-surface analysis (the DDA-ICE) which allows to accurately retrieve icesat-2 surface heights even in regions of heavy crevassing or firn cover and under intermittent clouds (herzfeld ET AL., 2017). Surface heights resultant from the DD a-ICE will have the resolution of the geolocated photon-data (expected as 0.7 m along-track postings under clear atmospheric conditions). Objectives of the proposed work are to evaluate the quality of icesat-2 measurements when analyzed with the DDA-ICE (W.R.T. Spatial variability, accuracy, precision and uncertainty) using airborne data of key glacier regions, implement the approach as an operational algorithm on the NASA cloud, investigate the feasibility of performing repeat processing of all ATL03 data over the greenland ICE sheet, and analyze first atlas data right after launch (as soon as ATL03 data become available) aimed at deriving first icesat-2 results on melt and acceleration processes. The idea is to show what types of results can be gained from the high-resolution atlas data. Prototype icesat-2 atlas research data products will be developed with applications in mind. The evaluation of surface-height determination will include collection of airborne laser altimeter data, time-laps imagery and real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS data of the ICE surface of an arctic glacier during surge (negribreen, svalbard), augmenting an existing project of the PI, along icesat-2 ground trac