The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations
Sea-ice concentrations derived from satellite microwave brightness temperatures are less accurate during summer. In the Arctic Ocean the lack of accuracy is primarily caused by melt ponds, but also by changes in the properties of snow and the sea-ice surface itself. We investigate the sensitivity of...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:tc48140 2023-05-15T15:18:06+02:00 The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations Kern, Stefan Rösel, Anja Pedersen, Leif Toudal Ivanova, Natalia Saldo, Roberto Tonboe, Rasmus Tage 2018-09-27 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/2217/2016/ eng eng doi:10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/2217/2016/ eISSN: 1994-0424 Text 2018 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 2020-07-20T16:23:59Z Sea-ice concentrations derived from satellite microwave brightness temperatures are less accurate during summer. In the Arctic Ocean the lack of accuracy is primarily caused by melt ponds, but also by changes in the properties of snow and the sea-ice surface itself. We investigate the sensitivity of eight sea-ice concentration retrieval algorithms to melt ponds by comparing sea-ice concentration with the melt-pond fraction. We derive gridded daily sea-ice concentrations from microwave brightness temperatures of summer 2009. We derive the daily fraction of melt ponds, open water between ice floes, and the ice-surface fraction from contemporary Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflectance data. We only use grid cells where the MODIS sea-ice concentration, which is the melt-pond fraction plus the ice-surface fraction, exceeds 90 %. For one group of algorithms, e.g., Bristol and Comiso bootstrap frequency mode (Bootstrap_f), sea-ice concentrations are linearly related to the MODIS melt-pond fraction quite clearly after June. For other algorithms, e.g., Near90GHz and Comiso bootstrap polarization mode (Bootstrap_p), this relationship is weaker and develops later in summer. We attribute the variation of the sensitivity to the melt-pond fraction across the algorithms to a different sensitivity of the brightness temperatures to snow-property variations. We find an underestimation of the sea-ice concentration by between 14 % (Bootstrap_f) and 26 % (Bootstrap_p) for 100 % sea ice with a melt-pond fraction of 40 %. The underestimation reduces to 0 % for a melt-pond fraction of 20 %. In presence of real open water between ice floes, the sea-ice concentration is overestimated by between 26 % (Bootstrap_f) and 14 % (Bootstrap_p) at 60 % sea-ice concentration and by 20 % across all algorithms at 80 % sea-ice concentration. None of the algorithms investigated performs best based on our investigation of data from summer 2009. We suggest that those algorithms which are more sensitive to melt ponds could be optimized more easily because the influence of unknown snow and sea-ice surface property variations is less pronounced. Text Arctic Arctic Ocean Sea ice Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Arctic Arctic Ocean The Cryosphere 10 5 2217 2239 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
op_collection_id |
ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
Sea-ice concentrations derived from satellite microwave brightness temperatures are less accurate during summer. In the Arctic Ocean the lack of accuracy is primarily caused by melt ponds, but also by changes in the properties of snow and the sea-ice surface itself. We investigate the sensitivity of eight sea-ice concentration retrieval algorithms to melt ponds by comparing sea-ice concentration with the melt-pond fraction. We derive gridded daily sea-ice concentrations from microwave brightness temperatures of summer 2009. We derive the daily fraction of melt ponds, open water between ice floes, and the ice-surface fraction from contemporary Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflectance data. We only use grid cells where the MODIS sea-ice concentration, which is the melt-pond fraction plus the ice-surface fraction, exceeds 90 %. For one group of algorithms, e.g., Bristol and Comiso bootstrap frequency mode (Bootstrap_f), sea-ice concentrations are linearly related to the MODIS melt-pond fraction quite clearly after June. For other algorithms, e.g., Near90GHz and Comiso bootstrap polarization mode (Bootstrap_p), this relationship is weaker and develops later in summer. We attribute the variation of the sensitivity to the melt-pond fraction across the algorithms to a different sensitivity of the brightness temperatures to snow-property variations. We find an underestimation of the sea-ice concentration by between 14 % (Bootstrap_f) and 26 % (Bootstrap_p) for 100 % sea ice with a melt-pond fraction of 40 %. The underestimation reduces to 0 % for a melt-pond fraction of 20 %. In presence of real open water between ice floes, the sea-ice concentration is overestimated by between 26 % (Bootstrap_f) and 14 % (Bootstrap_p) at 60 % sea-ice concentration and by 20 % across all algorithms at 80 % sea-ice concentration. None of the algorithms investigated performs best based on our investigation of data from summer 2009. We suggest that those algorithms which are more sensitive to melt ponds could be optimized more easily because the influence of unknown snow and sea-ice surface property variations is less pronounced. |
format |
Text |
author |
Kern, Stefan Rösel, Anja Pedersen, Leif Toudal Ivanova, Natalia Saldo, Roberto Tonboe, Rasmus Tage |
spellingShingle |
Kern, Stefan Rösel, Anja Pedersen, Leif Toudal Ivanova, Natalia Saldo, Roberto Tonboe, Rasmus Tage The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
author_facet |
Kern, Stefan Rösel, Anja Pedersen, Leif Toudal Ivanova, Natalia Saldo, Roberto Tonboe, Rasmus Tage |
author_sort |
Kern, Stefan |
title |
The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
title_short |
The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
title_full |
The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
title_fullStr |
The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
title_full_unstemmed |
The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
title_sort |
impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/2217/2016/ |
geographic |
Arctic Arctic Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Arctic Ocean |
genre |
Arctic Arctic Ocean Sea ice |
genre_facet |
Arctic Arctic Ocean Sea ice |
op_source |
eISSN: 1994-0424 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/10/2217/2016/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
5 |
container_start_page |
2217 |
op_container_end_page |
2239 |
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1766348325095735296 |