Quantifying Spatial Relationships in Ice Penetrating Radar Measurement Uncertainty Through Clutter Simulation

Quantifying uncertainty in subglacial topography measured with airborne radio-echo sounding (RES) is important for studying ice sheet dynamics and constraining future ice sheet behavior. Measurement accuracy is influenced by bed geometry. However, measurement uncertainties from off-nadir reflections are insufficiently characterized for quantifying topographic measurement uncertainty from off-nadir reflections. In this paper, we use a clutter simulator to quantify this source of uncertainty. We find that measurement uncertainty from clutter is spatially correlated and is strongly dependent on topographic roughness. This method could be used to estimate measurement uncertainty in RES measurements and enable more robust uncertainty quantification in bed topography.