Assessing the Potential of Enhanced Resolution Gridded Passive Microwave Brightness Temperatures for Retrieval of Sea Ice Parameters

Abstract

A new enhanced resolution gridded passive microwave brightness temperature (TB) product is used to estimate sea ice concentration and motion. The effective resolution of the TBs is found to be roughly twice that of the standard 25 km resolution, though the gridded resolution of the distributed product is higher. Enhanced resolution sea ice concentrations from the Bootstrap algorithm show more detail in the sea ice, including relatively small open water regions within the ice pack. Sea ice motion estimates from the enhanced resolution TBs using a maximum cross-correlation method show a smoother motion circulation pattern; in comparison to buoys, RMS errors are 15–20% lower than motion estimates from the standard resolution fields and the magnitude of the bias is smaller as well. The enhanced resolution product includes other potentially beneficial characteristics, including twice-daily grids based on local time of day and a complete timeseries of data from nearly all multi-channel passive microwave radiometers since 1978. These enhanced resolution TBs are potential new source for long-term records of sea ice concentration, motion, age, melt, as well as salinity and ocean-atmosphere fluxes.

Keywords

• sea ice
• passive microwave
• remote sensing
• Arctic