The Sea Ice Radar Altimetry (SIRAL) project of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) is based on satellite radar altimetry data to investigate the sea ice mass balance and related processes to understand Arctic Change. The name of the project is also a homage to the radar altimeter onboard CryoSat-2, the Synthetic and Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL) which has been a game changer for sea-ice thickness information from satellite radar altimetry. The thickness information obtained from radar altimetry adds the third dimension to the sea ice concentration data record and is an essential parameter for climate research and numerical weather prediction.
This wiki is dedicated to the documentation of sea ice thickness data sets from radar altimeter data produced at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Please also check the blog for news and updates as well as the CS2SMOS wiki for information on merged CryoSat-2/SMOS sea ice thickness data.
New & Updates
Processing of near-realtime CryoSat-2 data has been discontinued and will be resumed in November 2019
Processing of near-realtime and reprocessed CryoSat-2 data has been resumed. (Access Data Products)
The AWI CryoSat-2 sea ice product has been updated to version 2.1 in October 2018 for the entire CryoSat-2 data period (2010 - present). The previous version 2.0 is discontinued. See Whats new in version 2.1. Full documentation in the Product User Guide.
Table of Contents
Sea ice thickness data sets from radar altimetry:
Technical information on data set content and usage: