Erroneous sea-ice concentration retrieval in the East Antarctic

Large discrepancies have been observed between satellite-derived sea-ice concentrations(IC) from passive microwave remote sensing and those derived from optical images at several locations in the East Antarctic, between February and April 2014. These artefacts, that resemble polynyas in the IC maps,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of Glaciology
Main Authors: Hoi Ming Lam, Gunnar Spreen, Georg Heygster, Christian Melsheimer, Neal W. Young
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1017/aog.2018.1
https://doaj.org/article/9dfc29868e3746f6b961dba358477bfe
Description
Summary:Large discrepancies have been observed between satellite-derived sea-ice concentrations(IC) from passive microwave remote sensing and those derived from optical images at several locations in the East Antarctic, between February and April 2014. These artefacts, that resemble polynyas in the IC maps, appear in areas where optical satellite data show that there is landfast sea ice. The IC datasets and the corresponding retrieval algorithms are investigated together with microwave brightness temperature, air temperature, snowfall and bathymetry to understand the failure of the IC retrieval. The artefacts are the result of the application of weather filters in retrieval algorithms. These filters use the 37 and 19 GHz channels to correct for atmospheric effects on the retrieval. These channels show significant departures from typical ranges when the artefacts occur. A melt–refreeze cycle with associated snow metamorphism is proposed as the most likely cause. Together, the areas of the artefacts account for up to 0.5% of the Antarctic sea-ice area and thus cause a bias in sea-IC time series. In addition, erroneous sea ICs can adversely affect shipping operations.