A Meta-Analysis of Sea Ice Monitoring Using Spaceborne Polarimetric SAR: Advances in the Last Decade

Abstract

Sea ice profoundly influences ocean circulation, the polar environment, biology, climate, and commercial activities. The rapidly changing sea ice environment and increased human activities in polar regions drive the demand for sea ice monitoring. Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been widely adopted for sea ice sensing due to its all-weather, high spatial resolution, and day-and-night imaging capabilities. Previous reviews have addressed sea ice sensing based on various applications and sensors. However, no meta-analysis has been performed to specifically explore spaceborne polarimetric SAR-data-based sea ice sensing. Therefore, this study aims to provide a meta-analysis of spaceborne polarimetric SAR-data-based sea ice sensing by investigating 182 articles published in the last decade. Sea ice sensing applications for retrieving four key geophysical parameters (sea ice types, concentration, thickness, and motion) as well as SAR scattering characteristics analysis for sea ice are included. The review database was created with 15 fields including quantitative and qualitative perspectives, such as SAR frequency, polarization mode, methodology, evaluation metrics, etc. This meta-analysis aims to provide comparisons among different techniques and identify current challenges to determine effective methods for sea ice sensing. Overall, a snapshot of spaceborne polarimetric SAR-data-based sea ice sensing is presented through the meta-analysis, which could benefit researchers for future studies to advance this field.