Estimation of Thin Ice Thickness and Detection of Fast Ice from SSM/I Data in the Antarctic Ocean

Abstract

Abstract Antarctic coastal polynyas are important areas of high sea ice production and dense water formation, and thus their detection including an estimate of thin ice thickness is essential. In this paper, the authors propose an algorithm that estimates thin ice thickness and detects fast ice using Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) data in the Antarctic Ocean. Detection and estimation of sea ice thicknesses of <0.2 m are based on the SSM/I 85- and 37-GHz polarization ratios (PR85 and PR37) through a comparison with sea ice thicknesses estimated from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data. The exclusion of data affected by atmospheric water vapor is discussed. Because thin ice and fast ice (specifically ice shelves, glacier tongues, icebergs, and landfast ice) have similar PR signatures, a scheme was developed to separate these two surface types before the application of the thin ice algorithm to coastal polynyas. The probability that the algorithm correctly distinguishes thin ice from thick ice and from fast ice is ∼95%, relative to the ice thicknesses estimated from AVHRR. Although the standard deviation of the difference between the thin ice thicknesses estimated from the SSM/I algorithm and AVHRR is ∼0.05 m and thus not small, the estimated ice thicknesses from the microwave algorithm appear to have small biases and the accuracies are independent of region and season. A distribution map of thin ice occurrences derived from the SSM/I algorithm represents the Ross Sea coastal polynya being by far the largest among the Antarctic coastal polynyas; the Weddell Sea coastal polynyas are much smaller. Along the coast of East Antarctica, coastal polynyas frequently form on the western side of peninsulas and glacier tongues, downstream of the Antarctic Coastal Current.