Brief Communication: Mesoscale and submesoscale dynamics in the marginal ice zone from sequential synthetic aperture radar observations

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Kozlov, Igor E., Plotnikov, Evgeny V., Manucharyan, Georgy E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2020
• Subjects: article; Verlagsveröffentlichung; Fram Strait; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2941-2020; https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00053044; https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00052697/tc-14-2941-2020.pdf; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/2941/2020/tc-14-2941-2020.pdf

New possibilities for horizontal current retrieval in marginal ice zones (MIZs) from sequential Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images are demonstrated. Daily overlapping SAR acquisitions within 70–85∘ S/N at time intervals < 1 h enable estimation of high-resolution velocity fields, revealing MIZ dynamics down to submesoscales. An example taken from the Fram Strait MIZ reveals energetic eddies and filaments with Rossby numbers reaching O(1) magnitudes. The SAR-derived velocity estimations at such high spatial resolution can be critical for monitoring the evolving MIZ dynamics and model validation of submesoscale processes in polar oceans.