Sensitivity of Passive Microwave Satellite Observations to Snow Density and Grain Size Over Arctic Sea Ice

Snow cover on Arctic sea ice is crucial to understanding sea ice evolution and the heat budget in the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean. Despite advancements in remote sensing technology, accurately estimating snow depth (SD), grain size, and density on a large scale remains challenging. This study exam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 2023, Vol.61, p.1-10
Main Authors: Kwon, Young-Joo, Kim, Hyun-Cheol, Kim, Jong-Min, Park, Jeong-Won, Kim, Seung Hee
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Approximation
Arctic
Arctic sea ice
Brightness
Brightness temperature
Cold regions
Density
Grain size
Heat budget
Ice
Ice cover
Mass balance
Metamorphism
Microwave integrated circuits
Microwave measurement
Particle size
passive microwave (PMW)
Physical states
Radiative transfer
radiative transfer model
Radiometers
Remote sensing
Satellite observation
Satellites
Scattering
Sea ice
Snow
Snow cover
Snow density
Snow depth
snow depth (SD)
Surface radiation temperature
Temperature ratio
Temporal variations
Winter
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Summary:Snow cover on Arctic sea ice is crucial to understanding sea ice evolution and the heat budget in the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean. Despite advancements in remote sensing technology, accurately estimating snow depth (SD), grain size, and density on a large scale remains challenging. This study examines the influence of snow density and grain size on passive microwave satellite observation data. Data were collected from December 2012 to February 2016 using Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) brightness temperature (BT) data, and snow depth was estimated using ice-tethered ice mass balance (IMB) data from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), Hanover, NH, USA. A two-stream approximation radiative transfer model that accounts for the scattering effect of the snow layer over Arctic sea ice was used. This study found that the slope in the linear relationship between the snow density and the BT indices [such as gradient ratio (GR) and brightness temperature ratio (BTR)] is highly sensitive to the density and grain size of the snow layer. Using this dependence, the temporal changes in the physical state of the snow layer were inferred from the observation over the winter season. The radiative transfer model simulations revealed that the grain size of the snow layer decreases during winter as the snow density increases, likely due to the counterbalancing effect of new snow on the temporal variability in grain size increasing caused by snow metamorphism.
ISSN:0196-2892
1558-0644
DOI:10.1109/TGRS.2023.3322401