Elevation Change Along the Expedition Route in PANDA Transection of Antarctica from Cryosat-2

Satellite radar altimetry has been widely used to investigate the elevation change and mass balance in the polar region. Compared with traditional radar altimeters, CryoSat can not only provide a denser network of ground tracks but also higher measuring accuracy. However, the long orbit cycle (369 days) of CryoSat is less suited to the conventional cross-over technique that has been applied to longer time series. In this paper, a new method called the near repeat track is proposed and the related data preprocessing of Gross Error Elimination and Backscatter correction are also introduced, based on the data characteristics and the collaborative analysis between CryoSat and EnviSat. Using these methods, the elevation change in the PANDA transection of Antarctica from 2012 to 2014 was extracted and analysed. The result shows an ascending trend of 0.017±0.009m/a that agrees well with the result of other research along the inspection route in the PANDA transection. However, the accumulation of distribution is not uniform. To check the results, the elevation change as presented in this paper is compared with the field measurement data, and the same trend was obtained.