Open Source Visualization for Radar Altimetry Waveforms

Radar altimetry is a valuable tool for monitoring topographic changes in Earth’s polar regions. An important part of these altimetry data sets is the waveforms that are received and recorded by the radar. These waveforms are processed to create surface-height data products, but also contain information about the scattering surface and near-subsurface. However, there is currently not open-source software available for visualizing these radar altimetry waveforms in an efficient and reproducible workflow. This paper presents OpenWaveforms, a software application that is in development that will make lower-level radar altimetry data products more accessible and user-friendly for researchers. The current state of the software is shown, along with the next steps planned for the software and the goals for the finished application.