COSMO-SkyMed contribution in the polar regions
Daraio, Maria Girolamo ; Battagliere, Maria Libera ; Battazza, Fabrizio ; ...Coletta, Alessandro
Jun - 2015

Event Title : 35 th EARSeL Symposium – European Remote Sensing: Progre ss, Challenges and Opportunities Stockholm, Sweden
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type: Conference Proceedings

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the contribution provided by ASI to the polar community through COSMO-SkyMed data. In recent years, the CSK datasets acquired, also responding to the needs of the polar community expressed in the context of PSTG, represent relevant data for scientists and users in the study of polar phenomena such as: melting ice, speed of glaciers surface, monitoring of the polynya, mapping of the polar regions. The Polar Space Task Group (PSTG) has been established under the auspices of the World Metereological Organization (WMO). The group mandate is to provide coordination across Space Agencies to facilitate acquisition and distribution of fundamental satellite datasets, and to support research and applications in the cryosphere. In order to better harmonize the collection and utilization of different Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data sets, the SAR Coordination Working Group was formed as a sub-group of PSTG. ASI (the Italian Space Agency) participates to the PSTG contributing with COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) constellation data generated by four mid-sized satellites equipped with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). In the north and south polar regions, repeated coverage of ice sheets has been performed using COSMO-SkyMed SAR data since 2010 (also in conjunction with RADARSAT-2, TerraSAR-X, Sentinel-1). In order to support the recent needs, coming from scientific community for Ice Sheet application, ASI has been conceived a new planning of specific background acquisition plan in Antarctica and Greenland. The plans concern CSK high spatial and time resolution interferometric acquisitions of the Glaciers and the Antarctic coast. In addition ASI has recently issued two open calls dedicated to the scientific utilization of COSMO-SkyMed data (free of charge) for basic and applied Research & Development (R&D)

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