Monitoring continental ice sheets by satellite altimetry

Abstract Altimeter data are helpful in monitoring the evolution of polar caps as well as constraining their dynamics. In the recent years, our group has quantified the impact of the so-called volume echo on the determination of the surface height, analyzed the effect of surface roughness on the intensity of the radar signal, adapted an inverse technique for mapping the topography of the ice sheets and its error, including correction of the surface slope effect and finally used the Antarctica ice sheet topography deduced from Seasat data to estimate the rheological parameters of the ice flow.