The precision and accuracy of surface elevation measurements of the Greenland ice sheet provided by 20–25 m‐footprint waveform laser altimetry is assessed using data collected by NASA's LVIS airborne lidar in September 2007. Repeated data acquisitions from two ∼850 km long transects over the ice sheet and a ∼30 km‐long transect in the Summit area are evaluated for consistency and compared to in situ data for validation. Comparisons to data collected by NASA's ICESat system reveal good agreement. In the Summit area, differences are better than 0.07 m (1 σ ) (except for L3C where it is 0.13 m), with mean offsets of −0.09 to 0.16 m depending on the campaign. Within the feeder zone to Jakobshavn Glacier, ice elevation decreases of up to 12 m, 2004–2008, are observed. The results suggest that 25 m waveform lidar can measure ice sheet elevation precisely and accurately and that the measurement scheme could be used to complement the legacy ICESat measurements.
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Hofton et al. (2008) studied this question.