CryoSat ice processor: High-level overview of Baseline-C data and quality control
Mannan R., Webb E., Hall A., Bouffard J., Femenias P., Parrinello T., Bouffard J., Brockley D., Baker S., Scagliola M., Urien S.
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.