GEOSAT Altimeter Sea-Ice Mapping

The 12 March 1985 GEOSAT launch enable satellite oceanographers to continue the earlier sea-ice monitoring shown to be feasible with the GEOS-3 and SEASAT altimeters (1). The large difference in return signals from a 13.5 GHz pulse over water versus over sea-ice permits the generation of an ice inde...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hawkins, Jeffrey D., Lybanon, Matthew
Other Authors: NAVAL OCEAN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY STENNIS SPACE CENTER MS
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1989
Subjects:
Snow
Ice and Permafrost
*MAPPING
*SEA ICE
OCEAN SURFACE
PARAMETERS
EDGES
AIRBORNE
WAVEFORMS
MICROWAVES
SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR
REFLECTION
REMOTE DETECTORS
RADIO ALTIMETERS
ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES
EXTRACTION
CLOUD COVER
ALL WEATHER
ARCTIC REGIONS
INDEXES(RATIOS)
DATA BASES
REPRINTS
*SATELLITE ALTIMETRY
*ALTIMETRY
GEOSAT SATELLITES
PE63704N
WUDN394421
Antarctic
Arctic
Antarc*
Ice
permafrost
Sea ice
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA207391
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA207391
Description
Summary:The 12 March 1985 GEOSAT launch enable satellite oceanographers to continue the earlier sea-ice monitoring shown to be feasible with the GEOS-3 and SEASAT altimeters (1). The large difference in return signals from a 13.5 GHz pulse over water versus over sea-ice permits the generation of an ice index that responds abruptly to sea-ice edges. Sample Arctic and Antarctic operational sea-ice index plots are shown, depicting the current effort within the Remote Sensing Branch at the Naval Ocean Research and Development Activity (NORDA). This NORDA program provides graphical ice-index displays along GEOSAT nadir tracks to the Navy/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Ice Center (JIC) for assimilation into their sea-ice database. The altimeter's all-weather capability has been an important addition to the JIC data bases, since cloud cover can drastically curtail visible and infrared viewing, and passive microwave data has coarser resolution. Ongoing research efforts are aimed at extracting additional sea-ice parameters from the altimeter waveform, which contain information on the reflecting surface. Possibilities include discrimination between water, land, ice, combination water/ice, and water/land, as well as distinguishing various ice concentrations and possibly ice types. Coincident airborne passive microwave and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data have been collected to test several methods which appear to be promising. Reprint. Original contains color plates: All DTIC/NTIS reproductions will be in black and white. Pub. in IEEE Jnl. of Oceanic Engineering, v14 n2 p139-148 Apr 1989.

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