On the relationship between energy fluxes, dielectric properties, and microwave scattering over snow covered first‐year sea ice during the spring transition period

Abstract

In this research we investigate the seasonal nature of the co‐variability in surface energy balance variables, volume dielectrics, and microwave scattering (ERS 1) of a snow‐covered first‐year sea ice surface during a spring transitional period. Variables required to derive the components of the energy balance and dielectric properties were measured during the Seasonal Sea Ice Monitoring and Modeling site in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1992. We observed that both the energy terms and dielectric properties followed a pattern similar to the total relative scattering cross section (σ°) over the seasonal transition from winter to spring. We explain this relationship through the impact of surface fluxes on dielectric and geophysical properties of the snow‐covered first‐year sea ice. We speculate that ice surface scattering dominated the total scattering cross section σ° prior to Julian day 120 and that the snow volume contributed an increasing amount of scattering to σ° over the remainder of the season. From a multivariate statistical analysis we find that the surface temperature Ts and the net shortwave energy flux K* explained a statistically significant amount of the variation observed in the seasonal evolution of σ°. An inverse relationship existed between both Ts and K* relative to σ,° and the influence of Ts was approximately twice that of K* in explaining the observed variation in σ°.