Emulating Sentinel-1 Doppler Radial Ice Drift Measurements Using Envisat ASAR Data

Abstract

Using data from the Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument, this paper demonstrates how the high-precision radial surface velocity product, which will become available with the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 satellite, can complement the analysis of sea ice motion. High-resolution Doppler frequency measurements are used to estimate the subsecond line-of-sight motion of drifting sea ice in Fram Strait. We compare the method with buoy measurements and a recent cross-correlation algorithm for tracking ice between pairs of images. Maximum speeds measured from the time series were on the order of 20 cm/s. Using our method, we measured instantaneous speeds reaching 40–60 cm/s.