Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 26 Issue 02

View Issue TOC
Volume 26, No. 2
Pages 100 - 111

OpenAccess

Sea Ice Monitoring by Synthetic Aperture Radar

By Wolfgang Dierking  
Jump to
Article Abstract Citation References Copyright & Usage
Article Abstract

Satellite-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are highly valuable not only for observing the open ocean but also for monitoring seasonally or permanently ice-covered ocean regions in the Arctic, Antarctic, and other areas such as the Baltic Sea, the Bohai Sea, or the Sea of Okhotsk. Fundamentals of sea ice monitoring by SAR that address the following questions are introduced: Which sea ice properties influence the radar backscattering signal directly? Which geophysical sea ice parameters are retrieved from SAR images? Important fields of recent sea ice observation activities, such as ice type classification, ice drift retrieval, and melt detection, are described. Modern satellite sensor technologies offer possibilities for significant improvements of retrieval methods, especially for more complex tasks of sea ice monitoring such as determination of ice thickness. These technologies cover enhancements of the SAR instruments themselves (multipolarization and multifrequency systems), modified mission designs (satellite constellations), and the combined use of different passive and active sensors operated in the optical, thermal, and microwave regimes.

Citation

Dierking, W. 2013. Sea ice monitoring by synthetic aperture radar. Oceanography 26(2):100–111, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2013.33.

References
    ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment). 2004. Impacts of a Warming Arctic. Cambridge University Press, 140 pp. Available online at http://www.acia.uaf.edu (accessed June 19, 2013).
  1. Dierking, W. 2010. Mapping of different sea ice regimes using images from Sentinel-1 and ALOS synthetic aperture radar. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 48(3):1,045–1,058, https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2009.2031806.
  2. Dierking, W., H. Skriver, and P. Gudmandsen. 2004. On the improvement of sea ice classification by means of radar polarimetry. Pp. 203–209 in Remote Sensing in Transition: Proceedings of the 23rd Symposium of the European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories, Ghent, Belgium, June 2–5, 2003. Rudi Goossens, ed., Millpress, Rotterdam.
  3. Drinkwater, M.R., R. Kwok, D.P. Winebrenner, and E. Rignot. 1991. Multifrequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar observations of sea ice. Journal of Geophysical Research 96(C11):20,679–20,698, https://doi.org/10.1029/91JC01915.
  4. Hollands, T., and W. Dierking. 2011. Performance of a multi-scale correlation algorithm for the estimation of sea ice drift from SAR images: Initial results. Annals of Glaciology 52(57):311–317, https://doi.org/​10.3189/172756411795931462.
  5. Kwok, R., C.F. Cunningham, and S.V. Nghiem. 2003. A study of the onset of melt over the Arctic Ocean in RADARSAT synthetic aperture radar data. Journal of Geophysical Research 108, 3363, https://doi.org/10.1029/2002JC001363.
  6. Kwok, R., E.C. Hunke, W. Maslowski, D. Menemenlis, and J. Zhang. 2008. Variability of sea ice simulations assessed with RGPS kinematics. Journal of Geophysical Research 113, C11012, https://doi.org/​10.1029/2008JC004783.
  7. Kwok, R., S.V. Nghiem, S.H. Yueh, and D.D. Huynh. 1995. Retrieval of thin ice thickness from multifrequency polarimetric SAR data. Remote Sensing of Environment 51:361–374, https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-4257(94)00017-H.
  8. Kwok, R., L. Toudal Pedersen, P. Gudmandsen, and S.S. Pang. 2010. Large sea ice outflow into the Nares Strait in 2007. Geophysical Research Letters 37, L03502, https://doi.org/​10.1029/2009GL041872
  9. Nakamura, K., H. Wakabayashi, S. Uto, S. Ushio, and F. Nishio. 2009. Observation of sea-ice thickness using ENVISAT data from Lützow-Holm Bay, East Antarctica. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 6(2):277–281, https://doi.org/10.1109/LGRS.2008.2011061.
  10. Nghiem, S.V., R. Kwok, S.H. Yueh, and M.R. Drinkwater. 1995. Polarimetric signatures of sea ice. Part 1. Theoretical model. Journal of Geophysical Research 100(C7):13,665–13,679, https://doi.org/10.1029/95JC00937.
  11. Nghiem, S.V., R. Kwok, S.H. Yueh, A.J. Gow, D.K. Perovich, J.A. Kong, and C.C. Hsu. 1997. Evolution in polarimetric signatures of thin saline ice under constant growth. Radio Science 32(1):127–151, https://doi.org/​10.1029/96RS03051.
  12. Sandven, S., O.M. Johannessen, M.W. Miles, L.H. Pettersson, and K. Kloster. 1999. Barents Sea seasonal ice zone features and processes from ERS 1 synthetic aperture radar: Seasonal Ice Zone Experiment 1992. Journal of Geophysical Research 104(C7):15,843–15,857, https://doi.org/10.1029/1998JC900050.
  13. Scheuchl, B., D. Flett, R. Caves, and I. Cumming. 2004. Potential of RADARSAT-2 data for operational sea ice monitoring. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 30(3):448–461, https://doi.org/10.5589/m04-011.
  14. Wakabayashi, H., T. Matsuoka, K. Nakamura, and F. Nishio. 2004. Polarimetric characteristics of sea ice in the Sea of Okhotsk observed by airborne L-band SAR. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 42(11):2,412–2,425, https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2004.836259.
Copyright & Usage

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.