Among the 6 “high priority candidate missions” foreseen to ensure data continuity of the current Copernicus Sentinel fleet after 2025, the Polar Ice and Snow Topography mission has to be designed to fulfill user requirements in particular regarding the observation and monitoring of the polar regions (ice sheet and sea ice regions). Phase A/B1 studies are on-going to analyze and design the most appropriate mission and instrumental configurations and anticipate their performances. Of course, legacies from Cryosat-2, Sentinel-3 and Saral missions will be exploited to efficiently take advantage of the synergies between measurements in Ku and Ka bands and between Low Resolution, SAR and SARin altimeter modes.
We propose in this talk to review the potential performances of such a mission in particular regarding its ability to provide accurate estimations of the snow depth over sea ice, key parameter for deriving ice thickness from freeboard estimations. A mission performance simulation tool (MPS) is under development in the frame of this study. Based on spectral characterization and combination of the errors, it will provide illustrations of the global performances of the future PolarIce mission.

Area D - Board 447