Incidence Angle Dependence of HH-Polarized C- and L-Band Wintertime Backscatter Over Arctic Sea Ice

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) incidence angle has a significant effect on the microwave backscatter from sea ice. This paper investigates the incidence angle dependence of C- and L-band HH-polarized microwave backscatter coefficient over Arctic first-year sea ice (FYI) and multiyear sea ice (MYI) in winter. Advanced Land Observation Satellite Phased Array type L-band SAR (L-band) and RADARSAT-2 (C-band) images are used to derive ice type-specific incidence angle dependencies calculated using linear regression models. For L-band, mean ice type-specific incidence angle dependencies for FYI and MYI are −0.21 and −0.30 dB/1°, respectively; and for C-band, they are −0.22 and −0.16 dB/1°, respectively. To validate our results, we calculated root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) by comparing the ice type-specific dependence from 2010 with individual dependencies from 2009 based on ice types and frequencies. The RMSD is found to be smaller than the standard deviation of ice type-specific dependencies for both frequencies. The RMSD values for the L-band incidence angle dependencies are 0.03 and 0.04 dB/1° for FYI and MYI, respectively. For C-band, the RMSD values for the FYI and MYI dependencies are 0.03 and 0.01 dB/1°, respectively. Subsequently, we demonstrate that after applying incidence angle normalization, the variability of C- and L-band SAR backscatter reduces and separability of ice types increase substantially.