Title	Ross Sea polynyas; response of ice concentration retrievals to large areas of thin ice
Author	Kwok, R.; Comiso, J.C.; Martin, S.; Drucker, R.
Author Affil	Kwok, R., California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. Other: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center; University of Washington
Source	Journal of Geophysical Research, 112( C12), C12012. Publisher: American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, United States. ISSN: 0148-0227
Publication Date	Dec. 8, 2007
Notes	In English. 23 refs. GeoRef Acc. No: 284643. CRREL Acc. No: 62004909
Index Terms	ice; ice cover; microwaves; polynyas; remote sensing; synthetic aperture radar; Southern Ocean--Ross Sea; algorithms; concentration; ice thickness; microwave methods; MODIS; Ross Sea; SAR; satellite methods; sea ice; Southern Ocean; spatial distribution
Abstract	For a 3-month period between May and July of 2005, we examine the response of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR- E) Enhanced NASA Team 2 (NT2) and AMSR-E Bootstrap (ABA) ice concentration algorithms to large areas of thin ice of the Ross Sea polynyas. Coincident Envisat Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) coverage of the region during this period offers a detailed look at the development of the polynyas within several hundred kilometers of the ice front. The high-resolution imagery and derived ice motion fields show bands of polynya ice. In this study, ice thickness from AMSR-E 36 GHz polarization information serves as the basis for examination of the response. The quality of the thickness of newly formed sea ice from AMSR-E is first assessed with thickness estimates derived from ice surface temperatures from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. The effect of large areas of thin ice in lowering the ice concentration estimates from both NT2/ABA approaches is clearly demonstrated. (mod. journ. abst.)
URL	http://hdl.handle.net/10.1029/2006JC003967
Publication Type	journal article
Record ID	84110