Detection of small-scale roughness and refractive index of sea ice in passive satellite microwave remote sensing

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• 作者：Sungwook Hong
• 关键词：Sea ice ; Small-scale roughness ; Refractive index ; Microwave ; Remote sensing
• 刊名：Remote Sensing of Environment
• 出版年：2010
• 出版时间：17 May 2010
• 年：2010
• 卷：114
• 期：5
• 页码：1136-1140
• 全文大小：998 K

文摘

Polar ice masses and sheets are sensitive indicators of climate change. Small-scale surface roughness significantly impacts the microwave emission of the sea ice/snow surface; however, published results of surface roughness measurements of sea ice are rare. Knowing the refractive index is important to discriminate between objects. In this study, the small-scale roughness and refractive index over sea ice are estimated with AMSR-E observations and a unique method. Consequently, the small-scale surface roughness of 0.25 cm to 0.5 cm at AMSR-E 6.9 GHz shows reasonable agreement with the results of known observations, ranging from 0.2 cm to 0.6 cm for the sea ice in the Antarctic and Arctic regions. The refractive indexes are retrieved from 1.6 to 1.8 for winter, from 1.2 to 1.4 for summer in the Arctic and the Antarctic, which are similar to those of the sea ice and results from previous studies. This research shows the physical characteristics of the sea ice edges and melting process. Accordingly, this investigation provides an effective procedure for retrieving the small-scale roughness and refractive index of sea ice and snow. Another advantage of this study is the ability to distinguish sea ice from the sea surface by their relative small-scale roughness.