Monitoring a glacier in southeastern Iceland with the portable Terrestrial Radar Interferometer

Terrestrial Radar Interferometry (TRI) has several advantages for measuring glacier velocity. These ground-based systems alleviate problems associated with the long revisit times of satellites, and provide higher spatial sampling compared to GPS-based approaches. TRI is the technique of choice for rapidly moving glaciers, especially their terminal zones, which tend to exhibit high spatial and temporal variability. In this study, we use the Gamma Portable Radar Interferometer (GPRI) to measure the velocity of Breidamerkurjokull, a marine-terminating outlet glacier on the southeastern coast of Iceland, and compare it to TerraSAR-X data taken shortly after. We document significant temporal and spatial variability of ice velocity within 800 meters of the calving front.