Use of a characteristic time scale of microwave emission to determine accumulation variability in Antarctica

Relationship of the Passive Microwave Characteristic Time Scale of Emission to Accumulation Rate in Antarctica Authors: Lora S. Koenig1, Eric J. Steig1, Dale P. Winebrenner2 1) Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington 2) Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington Passive microwave sensors offer a potential tool for retrieving accumulation rates over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. However, no retrieval method developed to date is reliable in both temporal and spatial domains. A new retrieval method is presented that shows considerable promise. The characteristic timescale of emission (τ ₀) is the ratio of the microwave extinction length in the firn, squared, to the firn thermal diffusivity. This characteristic time scale arises in a convolution expression that relates physical temperature to microwave brightness temperature, replacing the "emissivity" term in the traditional Rayleigh-Jeans approximation. τ ₀ can be estimated for the entire Antarctic continent by comparing thermal infrared observations of physical surface temperature from the AVHRR satellite with passive microwave brightness temperatures at the 37 GHz vertically polarized channel measured by the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) and Special Senor Microwave Imager (SSM/I). Comparison between τ ₀ and independent estimates of accumulation rate from radar-echo-sounding observations near Byrd Station Antarctica shows a strong linear relationship for accumulation rates over a broad range -- from 10 to 50 cm/year ice equivalent. Averaged over the 18 years of available data, τ ₀ varies over this area from a few days to more than three months. Estimates of τ ₀ over short time intervals of three years show patterns reminiscent of expected accumulation rate variability, and are of the correct magnitude to plausibly relate to temporal accumulation rate changes. Additional radar accumulation measurements from West Antarctica, which provide temporal as well as spatial estimates of accumulation over broad areas, are currently being compared with calculations of τ ₀ to further examine the extent to which the observed spatial relationship holds in the temporal domain.