ESA GNSS FinExp 2015 - Additional airborne activity in the Baltic Sea during the SPIR campaign - Data collection and processing report

This report outlines the airborne field operations with the ESA airborne Ku‐band interferometric radar (ASIRAS) and coincident airborne laser scanner (ALS) to acquire sea surface heights in the Baltic Sea to provide ground‐truth for the Software PARIS Interferometric Receiver (SPIR) experiment. The airborne campaign was coordinated by the National Space Institute (DTU Space) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) using the BAS Twin Otter (VP‐FAZ). The GNSS FinExp 2015 was carried out on April 29 – May 3, 2015, from Malmi airport in Helsinki, Finland, following an Arctic campaign to map the sea ice and land ice topography, as part of the EU FP7 projectI CE‐ARC (Ice, Climate, Economics – Arctic Research on Change), using the same aircraft and instrument installation.One near coincident flight with the SPIR instrument installed in a Skyvan belonging to the University of Aalto, Finland, was possible and obtained on May 3, 2015. The ASIRAS and ALS data was found to be of high quality with vertical accuracy of less than 10 cm. In general, the ASIRAS and ALS elevations show good agreement over open, using the OCOG re‐tracker.