Rignot Research Group

InSAR based Grounding Line

The delineation of an ice sheet grounding line, i.e. the transition boundary where ice detaches from the bed and becomes afloat in the ocean, is critical to ice sheet mass budget calculations, numerical modeling of ice sheet dynamics and time evolution, and studies of ice-ocean interactions, and subglacial environments.

Here, we present a comprehensive, high-resolution mapping of the grounding line of Antarctica obtained using differential satellite synthetic-aperture radar interferometry (DInSAR) data from the Earth Remote Sensing Satellites 1-2 (ERS-1/2), RADARSAT-1 and 2, and Advanced Land Observing System (ALOS) PALSAR spanning years 1994 to 2009.

Antarctic Grounding Line from Differential Satellite Radar Interferometry (Version 1.0)

Rignot, E., J. Mouginot, and B. Scheuchl. 2011. Antarctic Grounding Line Mapping from Differential Satellite Radar Interferometry, Geophyical Research Letters, 38, L10504,doi:10.1029/2011GL047109.

To download this data set go to: http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0498.html

The data set provides detailed mappings of the location of the Antarctic Ice Sheet grounding line, derived from satellite data collected between 1992 and 2009. Parameters include latitude, longitude, sensor, and up to 4 orbits and acquisitions dates. Two interferograms are required to perform differential interferometry. This requires a minimum of 3 consecutive acquisitions of a single sensor. In some cases two sets of two consecutive acquisitions were used to generate the grounding line. In the case of the ERS-1/ERS-2 Tandem mission, two Tandem interferograms (4 acquisitions) are used for grounding line detection.

Caption: Delineation of Antarctic grounding lines with satellite radar interferometry (DInSAR)
from ERS-1/2 (red), RADARSAT-1 (purple), RADARSAT-2 (blue), ALOS PALSAR (green)
overlaid on a MODIS mosaic of Antactica (Haran et al. 2006, NSIDC Digital Media)