CryoSat ice processor: High-level overview of Baseline-C data and quality control

Since April 2015, the CryoSat ice products have beengenerated with the new Baseline-C InstrumentProcessing Facilities (IPFs). This represents a majorupgrade to the CryoSat ice IPFs and is the baseline forthe second CryoSat Reprocessing Campaign. Baseline-C introduces major evolutions with respect to Baseline-B, most notably the release of freeboard data within theL2 SAR products, following optimisation of the SARretracker. Additional L2 improvements include a newArctic Mean Sea Surface (MSS) in SAR; a newtuneable land ice retracker in LRM; and a new DigitalElevation Model (DEM) in SARIn. At L1B new attitudefields have been introduced and existing datation andrange biases reduced. This paper provides a high leveloverview of the changes and evolutions implemented atBaseline-C in order to improve CryoSat L1B and L2data characteristics and exploitation over polar regions.An overview of the main Quality Control (QC)activities performed on operational Baseline-C productsis also presented.