Tenuous Correlation between Snow Depth or Sea Ice Thickness and C- or X-Band Backscattering in Nunavik Fjords of the Hudson Strait

Radar penetration in brine-wetted snow-covered sea ice is almost nil, yet reports exist of a correlation between snow depth or ice thickness and SAR parameters. This article presents a description of snow depth and first-year sea ice thickness distributions in three fjords of the Hudson Strait and o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Sophie Dufour-Beauséjour, Monique Bernier, Jérome Simon, Saeid Homayouni, Véronique Gilbert, Yves Gauthier, Juupi Tuniq, Anna Wendleder, Achim Roth
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021
Subjects:
sea ice
snow
remote sensing
synthetic aperture radar
Nunavik
Bayesian linear regression
Science
Q
Hudson
Hudson Strait
Sea ice
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040768
https://doaj.org/article/c4c8e88c77454f398b48b2e228db3d75
Description
Summary:Radar penetration in brine-wetted snow-covered sea ice is almost nil, yet reports exist of a correlation between snow depth or ice thickness and SAR parameters. This article presents a description of snow depth and first-year sea ice thickness distributions in three fjords of the Hudson Strait and of their tenuous correlation with SAR backscattering in the C- and X-band. Snow depth and ice thickness were directly measured in three fjords of the Hudson Strait from 2015 to 2018 in April or May. Bayesian linear regression analysis was used to investigate their relationship with RADARSAT-2 (C-band) or TerraSAR-X (X-band). Polarimetric ratios and the Cloude–Pottier decomposition parameters were explored along with the HH, HV and VV bands. Linear correlations were generally no higher than 0.3 except for a special case in May 2018. The co-polarization ratio did not perform better than the backscattering coefficients.

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