SIR‐B iceberg observation

Abstract

The Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR) made its second flight (called SIR‐B) in October 1984. Among the 44 science projects that it was due to support were two ice‐related studies, one concerning the behavior of the sea ice of the southern ocean pack and marginal ice zones and another concerning the detectability of icebergs and other navigational hazards off the east coast of Canada. The southern ocean sea ice team was led by F. Carsey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., and consisted of B. Holt (JPL), S. Martin (University of Washington, Seattle), L. Mc‐Nutt (Radarsat, Ottawa), D.A. Rothrock (Polar Science Center, Seattle), W.F. Weeks (U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, N.H.), and V. Squire (Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), Ottawa); the iceberg team was led by A.L. Gray (CCRS) and consisted of J.Princz, C.E. Livingstone, R.K. Hawkins, M. Wong (all of CCRS), D. Pearson (Petro‐Canada Exploration, Calgary, Canada), J. Gower (Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sydney, Canada), T.F. Mullane, and R.O. Ramseier (both of the Atmospheric Environment Service, Ottawa). As it happened, the SIR‐B mission experienced difficulty with its data link to a geostationary relay satellite and with the SIR‐B radar transmitter, with the consequences that the total amount of data taken was only about one fifth of what was planned and that the data quality was impaired in comparison to what had been anticipated. The result was that no iceberg synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images off the Canadian coast and very limited sea ice SAR images in the southern ocean were acquired; however, a few interesting SAR images of the southern ocean icebergs were acquired, and a few of these are shown in Figure 1.