Taking the dazzle out of CryoSat yields a first

Since it was launched more than 12 years ago, ESA’s CryoSat ice mission has dazzled by way of its sheer technological and scientific excellence. This superb Earth Explorer satellite has returned a wealth of information that has transformed our understanding of Earth’s ice and how it is responding to climate change. In some circumstances, however, being dazzled isn’t a good thing, particularly when it comes to measuring the height of sea ice from space during the summer.

A paper published in Nature describes how scientists have now found an ingenious way of removing the pesky problem of dazzle from surface meltwater to yield the first ever continuous, year-round, altimetry measurements of sea-ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean.