C-band backscatter signatures of old sea ice in the central Arctic during freeze-up

Journal Article · Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 1993 · IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/36.239904· OSTI ID:5435437

Carlstroem, A; Ulander, L M.H. ^[1]

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1. Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Goeteborg (Sweden). Dept. of Radio and Space Science

Radar backscatter signatures of old sea ice in the central Arctic have been measured and analyzed. A ship-mounted scatterometer was used to acquire backscattering coefficients at 5.4 GHz in the four linear polarization states and at incidence angles between 20[degree] and 60[degree]. Detailed in situ characterizations of the snow and ice were also made to enable comparison with theoretical backscatter models. Freeze-up conditions were prevalent during the experiments period with air temperatures a few degrees below the freezing point and decreasing. The average backscattering coefficient was found to increase when the temperature of the ice surface layer decreased. The semiempirical backscatter model is used to evaluate the measurements and shows that the backscatter increase is due to an increasing penetration depth causing the volume scattering to increase. In the paper, model predictions also show that both surface and volume scattering contribute significantly for the incidence angles of the ERS-1 SAR, i.e., 20[degree] to 26[degree]. At these incidence angles, the dominating scattering mechanism changes from surface to volume scattering as the ice surface temperature decreases during freeze-up.

• OSTI ID: 5435437
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 31:4; ISSN 0196-2892
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ICE CAPS
AERIAL MONITORING
RADIOMETRIC SURVEYS
DATA ANALYSIS
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
ICE
ICEBERGS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MELTING
MICROWAVE SPECTRA
REMOTE SENSING
CLIMATIC CHANGE
GEOPHYSICAL SURVEYS
MONITORING
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SPECTRA
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580000* - Geosciences
540120 - Environment
Atmospheric- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport- (1990-)