Annual cycle in lakes and rivers from CryoSat-2 altimetry — The Brahmaputra river

A key concern of the CryoSat-2 orbit has been its long repeat period of 369 days, which is usually undesirable for river and lake monitoring. However, the results of this study show that CryoSat-2 data can indeed be used for such monitoring by utilizing the high spatial coverage and the sub-cycle period of 30 days. The performance of CryoSat-2/SIRAL altimetry for river level monitoring is investigated by studying river levels retrieved from Ganges and Brahmaputra. An evaluation of CryoSat-2 river levels from LRM, SAR and SARIn data is performed by comparing with Envisat data from the period in which the two missions overlapped (2010-2012). Time series constructed using simple linear interpolation are fitted with a model to compare the captured annual signals and amplitudes. The annual cycles seen in CryoSat-2 and Envisat altimetry data agree very well and provide confidence in using CryoSat-2 data to continue river level archives from satellite radar altimetry.