First Assessment of Hy-2A Altimeter Data Over Antarctica and Greenland Using Crossover Analysis

The radar altimeter onboard China's HY-2A satellite was launched in August 2011 and it can provide the surface elevation measurements from 80.6 °N to 80.6 °S. In this letter, the precision of the HY-2A elevation measurements over the Antarctica ice sheet (AIS) and the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is assessed through crossover analysis. We process the HY-2A sensor geophysical dataset records (SGDR) data from June 1, 2014 to June 14, 2014. The OCOG, Ice-1 and Ice-2 algorithms are applied to retrack the waveforms of HY-2A altimeter over the AIS and GrIS. Crossover analysis shows that the Ice-2 algorithm performs best among the three algorithms. The precision of the HY-2A altimeter elevations are found to vary as a function of the threshold of the surface slope from ~56 cm to ~63 cm over the AIS, and from ~29 cm to ~50 cm over the GrIS.