Operational SAR-based sea ice drift monitoring over the Baltic Sea

An algorithm for computing ice drift from pairs of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images covering a common area has been developed at FMI. The algorithm has been developed based on the C-band SAR data over the Baltic Sea. It is based on phase correlation in two scales (coarse and fine) with some add...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ocean Science
Main Author: J. Karvonen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2012
Subjects:
G
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-8-473-2012
https://doaj.org/article/30c2eb462e0c4ff1981bfaf5a60ad3af
Description
Summary:An algorithm for computing ice drift from pairs of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images covering a common area has been developed at FMI. The algorithm has been developed based on the C-band SAR data over the Baltic Sea. It is based on phase correlation in two scales (coarse and fine) with some additional constraints. The algorithm has been running operationally in the Baltic Sea from the beginning of 2011, using Radarsat-1 ScanSAR wide mode and Envisat ASAR wide swath mode data. The resulting ice drift fields are publicly available as part of the MyOcean EC project. The SAR-based ice drift vectors have been compared to the drift vectors from drifter buoys in the Baltic Sea during the first operational season, and also these validation results are shown in this paper. Also some navigationally useful sea ice quantities, which can be derived from ice drift vector fields, are presented.