SAR Pancake Ice Thickness in the Southern Ocean during the PIPERS Project

Pancake and frazil ice represent an important component of the Arctic and Antarctic cryosphere, especially in the Marginal Ice Zones. The retrieval of its thickness by remote sensing is, in general, a very difficult task. A processing system has been developed and refined by these authors in the fra...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Giuseppe Aulicino, Peter Wadhams, Flavio Parmiggiani
Other Authors: Aulicino, Giuseppe, Wadhams, Peter, Parmiggiani, Flavio
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF 2018
Subjects:
SAR imagery
sea ice thickne
pancake ice
PIPERS
Arctic
Antarctic
Southern Ocean
The Antarctic
Weddell Sea
Ross Sea
Terra Nova Bay
Weddell
Pancake
Antarc*
Beaufort Sea
Sea ice
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11367/78131
https://www.polar2018.org/uploads/2/4/6/0/24605948/polar2018_abstractproceedings.pdf
Description
Summary:Pancake and frazil ice represent an important component of the Arctic and Antarctic cryosphere, especially in the Marginal Ice Zones. The retrieval of its thickness by remote sensing is, in general, a very difficult task. A processing system has been developed and refined by these authors in the framework of the EU SPICES project; it is meant for routinely deriving ice thickness in frazil-pancake regions using the spectral changes in wave spectra from imagery provided by space-borne SAR systems. This methodology has been successfully tested in the Beaufort Sea through comparison with ground truth collected during fall 2015. In the present study, this technique has been adapted and applied to Antarctic frazil/pancake icefields. Several case studies have been identified using different SAR products (CosmoSkyMed, Sentinel-1, TerraSAR-X). Our retrievals have been analyzed and validated through the comparison with co-located in situ observations collected by international research cruises realized in different sectors of the Antarctic region (i.e., Ross Sea, Weddell Sea). Particular attention has been addressed to in situ information collected in the framework of 2017 PIPERS cruise in the Terra Nova Bay and its polynya. A broad agreement was found between measured thicknesses and those retrieved from the SAR imagery. Results and statistics are presented and discussed in details.

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