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

• 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

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.