Sentinel-1 TOPS Interferometry for Ice Flow Mapping

Abstract:
A major challenge in applying Sentinel-1 interferometry to measure ice sheet velocity is the significant horizontal scene motion associated with ice flow, which can cause phase discontinuities at burst boundaries in the TOPS interferograms, leading to phase unwrapping problems. We present a simple method that uses an external multi-year average velocity map to account for the bulk of the scene motion in the coregistration, allowing phase unwrapping even in scenes with significant azimuth motion. The method is applied to two regions in Greenland, and a validation using GPS is presented.