CryoRad: a mission concept based on Low Frequency Wideband Radiometry for Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere

• Main Authors: Macelloni, Giovanni, Brogioni, Marco, Jezek, Kenneth, Leduc-Leballeur, Marion, Kaleschke, Lars, Picard, Ghislain, Ritz, Catherine, Nicholls, Keith, Boutin, Jacqueline, Turiel, Antonio, Lhermitte, Stef L., Mialon, Arnaud, Bertino, Laurent, Tietsche, Steffen, Closa, Josep
• Format: Still Image
• Language: English
• Published: European Space Agency 2022
• Subjects: Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/332013

Living Planet Symposium, 23-27 May 2022, Bonn, Germany Microwave sensors, both active and passive, are particularly suitable for observing polar regions because of their insensitivity to solar illumination and cloud coverage. However, most microwave sensors are sensitive to surface or near-surface properties because of their frequency of operation. Beginning in 2009, measurements of L-band radiometers (ESA SMOS, NASA Aquarius and SMAP) have provided the possibility of deriving deeper internal properties of ice sheets and sea ice as a result of the improved penetration capability at 1.4 GHz. It is estimated that such sensors are sensitive to about 30-40 cm for first year sea ice and to the upper 500-750 m of ice sheets, allowing the estimation of sea ice thickness (SMOS Sea Ice Thickness product, 2021) and ice sheet internal temperature profiles (Macelloni et al., 2019). The development of improved techniques for mitigating radio frequency interference in L-band radiometric missions has further led to the idea of using lower frequencies for monitoring the polar regions. A first airborne prototype (the Ultra-WideBand software defined RADiometer -UWBRAD) was developed in the US under a NASA -ESTO project led by The Ohio State University to observe brightness temperature spectra in the range 0.5-2 GHz (Andrews et al., 2017). Successful airborne campaigns in Greenland and Antarctica demonstrated the potential of this technique for inferring information on sea ice and internal ice sheets (Andrews et al., 2017, Yardim et al., 2020, Jezek et al 2018). Based on these promising results and the capabilities of the space industry, the CryoRad mission was proposed to ESA’s EE11 call. CryoRad consists of a single satellite hosting a single payload: a wideband, low-frequency microwave radiometer that explores the frequency range 0.4 GHz - 2 GHz with continuous frequency sampling, specifically designed to address scientific challenges in polar regions. The capability of CryoRad’s low frequencies to explore greater depths in ...