Abstract
This paper presents the validation of snow depth measurements over sea ice by a new airborne ultrawide-band radar. The radar was deployed in the Western Ross Sea, Antarctica, in November 2023. It has an operational bandwidth of 1-5 GHz enabling snow depth retrievals with a depth resolution of 5 cm. The system fits into an aerodynamic airframe that was towed underneath a Twin Otter airplane. In a first validation, the radar was operated on a sledge allowing direct comparison of radar snow depths with in-situ measurements. Comparison between the two sets of measurements at two different sites showed excellent correspondence of +/- 1.6 cm. In the second validation, averaged airborne snow depth measurements are compared with ground truth at eight sites on fast ice where snow depth ranged from 4 to 33 cm. Differences between the airborne radar and ground truth measurements range from 0.1 to 7.4 cm.