Sea Ice Displacement from SEASAT Synthetic Aperture Radar

• Main Authors: Hall,R T, Rothrock,D A
• Other Authors: WASHINGTON UNIV SEATTLE POLAR SCIENCE CENTER
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1981
• Subjects: Snow; Ice and Permafrost; Active & Passive Radar Detection & Equipment; Unmanned Spacecraft; *SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR; *SEA ICE; *SCIENTIFIC SATELLITES; DATA BASES; EXPERIMENTAL DATA; DISPLACEMENT; GRAPHS; ERRORS; DAY; DISCONTINUITIES; INTERVALS; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA096485; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA096485

Images obtained by a synthetic aperture radar on SEASAT have been used to measure sea ice displacements over a three day interval in October 1978. The data points lie roughly along a line and are quite dense--about 2 km apart--over a distance of 863 km. The displacements are about twenty kilometers. Displacement errors grow with distance from shore becoming as large as 3 km. The graph of displacement versus distance has occasional discontinuities of several kilometers. Displacement discontinuities are accurate to + or - 0.07 km along track and 3% of their magnitude across track.