Airborne Laser Altimetry of the Thwaites Glacier Catchment, West Antarctica

Abstract: This data set includes airborne altimetry collected over the catchment and main trunk of Thwaites Glacier, one of Antarctica's most active ice streams. The airborne altimetry comprises 35,000 line-kilometers sampled at 20 meters along track. The full dataset has an internal error of ±20 cm; a primary subset has an error of ±8 cm. We find a +20 cm bias with Geoscience Laser Altimeter System data over a flat interior region. These data will serve as an additional temporal reference for the evolution of Thwaites Glacier surface, as well as aid the construction of future high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM). Line data are available in space-delimited ASCII format and are available via FTP.