Spline-based helicopter movement filter for sea ice surface topography estimation from airborne laser range finder

Revision of an earlier submission to Cold Regions Science and Technology

Abstract
The surface topography of sea ice is important for several crucial climate processes, such as atmosphere-ice interaction, sea ice drift, snow redistribution and habitat conditions. A method, derived from the widely used three-steps Hibler filter, is suggested to gain quantitative surface topography information from airborne surveys over sea ice, when laser range finder are used. The method was tested and validated for several segments of a helicopter flight over Arctic sea ice. It was compared to a DTM generated from stereo-photogrammetry data collected simultaneously and independently from the laser data. The estimated ice surface profiles matched the reference DTM with an average absolute bias of 0.12 m.

Keyword: Sea ice, Surface topography, Laser range finder, Airborne