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Interest for icebergs and their possible impact on southern ocean circulation and biology has increased during the recent years. While large tabular icebergs are routinely tracked and monitored using scatterometer data, the distribution of smaller icebergs (less than some km) is still largely unknown as they are difficult to detect operationally using conventional satellite data. In a recent study, Tournadre et al. (2008) showed that small icebergs can be detected, at least in open water, using high resolution (20 Hz) altimeter waveforms. In the present paper, we present an improvement of their method that allows, assuming a constant iceberg freeboard elevation and constant ice backscatter coefficient, to estimate the top‐down iceberg surface area and therefore the distribution of the volume of ice on a monthly basis. The complete Jason‐1 reprocessed (version C) archive covering the 2002–2010 period has been …