The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice
Pond color, which creates the visual appearance of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice in summer, is quantitatively investigated using a two-stream radiative transfer model for ponded sea ice. The upwelling irradiance from the pond surface is determined and then its spectrum is transformed into RGB (red, g...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:tc59896 2023-05-15T13:11:35+02:00 The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice Lu, Peng Leppäranta, Matti Cheng, Bin Li, Zhijun Istomina, Larysa Heygster, Georg 2018-09-27 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/12/1331/2018/ eng eng doi:10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/12/1331/2018/ eISSN: 1994-0424 Text 2018 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 2020-07-20T16:23:20Z Pond color, which creates the visual appearance of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice in summer, is quantitatively investigated using a two-stream radiative transfer model for ponded sea ice. The upwelling irradiance from the pond surface is determined and then its spectrum is transformed into RGB (red, green, blue) color space using a colorimetric method. The dependence of pond color on various factors such as water and ice properties and incident solar radiation is investigated. The results reveal that increasing underlying ice thickness H i enhances both the green and blue intensities of pond color, whereas the red intensity is mostly sensitive to H i for thin ice ( H i < 1.5 m) and to pond depth H p for thick ice ( H i > 1.5 m), similar to the behavior of melt-pond albedo. The distribution of the incident solar spectrum F 0 with wavelength affects the pond color rather than its intensity. The pond color changes from dark blue to brighter blue with increasing scattering in ice, and the influence of absorption in ice on pond color is limited. The pond color reproduced by the model agrees with field observations for Arctic sea ice in summer, which supports the validity of this study. More importantly, the pond color has been confirmed to contain information about meltwater and underlying ice, and therefore it can be used as an index to retrieve H i and H p . Retrievals of H i for thin ice ( H i < 1 m) agree better with field measurements than retrievals for thick ice, but those of H p are not good. The analysis of pond color is a new potential method to obtain thin ice thickness in summer, although more validation data and improvements to the radiative transfer model will be needed in future. Text albedo Arctic Sea ice Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Arctic The Cryosphere 12 4 1331 1345 |
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Open Polar |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
Pond color, which creates the visual appearance of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice in summer, is quantitatively investigated using a two-stream radiative transfer model for ponded sea ice. The upwelling irradiance from the pond surface is determined and then its spectrum is transformed into RGB (red, green, blue) color space using a colorimetric method. The dependence of pond color on various factors such as water and ice properties and incident solar radiation is investigated. The results reveal that increasing underlying ice thickness H i enhances both the green and blue intensities of pond color, whereas the red intensity is mostly sensitive to H i for thin ice ( H i < 1.5 m) and to pond depth H p for thick ice ( H i > 1.5 m), similar to the behavior of melt-pond albedo. The distribution of the incident solar spectrum F 0 with wavelength affects the pond color rather than its intensity. The pond color changes from dark blue to brighter blue with increasing scattering in ice, and the influence of absorption in ice on pond color is limited. The pond color reproduced by the model agrees with field observations for Arctic sea ice in summer, which supports the validity of this study. More importantly, the pond color has been confirmed to contain information about meltwater and underlying ice, and therefore it can be used as an index to retrieve H i and H p . Retrievals of H i for thin ice ( H i < 1 m) agree better with field measurements than retrievals for thick ice, but those of H p are not good. The analysis of pond color is a new potential method to obtain thin ice thickness in summer, although more validation data and improvements to the radiative transfer model will be needed in future. |
format |
Text |
author |
Lu, Peng Leppäranta, Matti Cheng, Bin Li, Zhijun Istomina, Larysa Heygster, Georg |
spellingShingle |
Lu, Peng Leppäranta, Matti Cheng, Bin Li, Zhijun Istomina, Larysa Heygster, Georg The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
author_facet |
Lu, Peng Leppäranta, Matti Cheng, Bin Li, Zhijun Istomina, Larysa Heygster, Georg |
author_sort |
Lu, Peng |
title |
The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
title_short |
The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
title_full |
The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
title_fullStr |
The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
title_full_unstemmed |
The color of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice |
title_sort |
color of melt ponds on arctic sea ice |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/12/1331/2018/ |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
genre_facet |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
op_source |
eISSN: 1994-0424 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/12/1331/2018/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1331-2018 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
12 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
1331 |
op_container_end_page |
1345 |
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1766248085273444352 |