Geodetic Imaging of Time-Dependent Three-Component Surface Deformation: Application to Tidal-Timescale Ice Flow of Rutford Ice Stream, West Antarctica

We present a method for inferring time-dependent three-component surface deformation fields given a set of geodetic images of displacements collected from multiple viewing geometries. Displacements are parameterized in time with a dictionary of displacement functions. The algorithm extends an earlier single-component (i.e., single line of sight) framework for time-series analysis to three spatial dimensions using combinations of multitemporal, multigeometry interferometic synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and/or pixel offset (PO) maps. We demonstrate this method with a set of 101 pairs of azimuth and range PO maps generated for a portion of the Rutford Ice Stream, West Antarctica, derived from data collected by the COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. We compare our results with previously published InSAR mean velocity fields and selected GPS time series and show that our resulting three-component surface displacements resolve both secular motion and tidal variability.