A Research On Antarctic Sea Ice Based On Multi-source Microwave Remote Sensing

Antarctic is the greatest natural ice house. The ice and snow in Antarctic area is reputed as the temperature indicator in polar zone. It is a huge coldness fountain and produces a crucial impact upon global atmospheric and oceanic circulation, playing a significant part in the climatic change of our Earth. Moreover, due to polar night in Antarctic region, optical remote sensing approaches relying on sunlight are limited in ice surveillance of Antarctic. Microwave remote sensing, however, is capable of large-scale, long time detection, making up the drawbacks of the optical means. Accordingly, based on multi-source remote sensing (i.e. altimeter and microwave radiometer), research work of three aspects is conducted and the details are listed as follows:(1) As for the Antarctic ice detection by using altimeter: firstly, RA-2 altimeter data are utilized to analyze the backscattering characteristics of Antarctic sea ice, developing an ice edge detection method based on the backscattering characteristics of sea ice, and examining the validity of this method by making use of higher-resolution SAR imagery and ice eggs. Secondly, sea ice thickness model is used to extract Antarctic ice thickness. The results agree well with those derived by SAR data and ice eggs, and indicate that altimeter can detect lager areas of ice edge and ice thickness of Antarctic.(2) As for the Antarctic ice detection by microwave radiometer: by using bright temperature data acquired by AMSR-E and based on one-dimensional sea ice thermo-dynamic growth model, the growing and changing process of Antarctic sea ice is studied and analyzed. Also, a comparison is made between the analyzed results and those of SAR data with ice eggs. The analysis demonstrates a decent agreement between AMSR-E-derived ice growing process and the counterpart of SAR data with ice eggs. The results show that microwave radiometer is competent at detection of Antarctic ice changes.(3) As to the Antarctic ice detection by combining altimeter with microwave radiometer: Antarctic ice concentration detection is performed, based on the ice characteristics of backscattering and of bright temperature that are derived by RA-2 altimeter and AMSR-E microwave radiometer respectively. A good agreement between the detection results and those calculated by SAR imagery with ice eggs is discovered. The final results exhibit a promising advantage of large areas of Antarctic ice detection by RA-2 altimeter and AMSR-E microwave radiometer.