Development of ice thickness retrieval algorithms for large northern lakes from AMSR-E brightness temperature measurements
Abstract
Ice cover on lakes is a very sensitive to climate variability and change. With climate warming, lakes have the potential to greatly increase their energy and moisture exchanges with the atmosphere due to earlier break-up and warmer lake temperature during the open water season. Lake ice growth occurs between ice-on date and melt-onset as a result of energy loss by the conductive heat flow to the atmosphere above from the water under the ice to the ice/snow interface. Previous studies have suggested the potential of using brightness temperatures measured from low-frequency passive microwave sensors to estimate lake ice thickness. In this respect, brightness temperatures from current satellite passive microwave platforms (i.e. AMSR-E and SSM/I) are a viable data source for the development of ice thickness retrieval algorithms from space. The major objective of this study is to develop ice algorithms to estimate ice thickness from brightness temperature (TB) measurements obtained from AMSR-E 18.7 GHz channel over large lakes in northern Canada (e.g. Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake). The evolution of the horizontally and vertically polarized TB derived from AMSR-E L2A products was compared with ice thickness obtained with a previously validated lake ice model over the course of seven winter seasons (2002-2009). Given that much of the variations in TB could be explained by ice growth, as demonstrated through the use of a recent version of the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) model, this relation was exploited to develop global and regional ice thickness retrieval algorithms. Following the application of the algorithms, estimated lake ice thickness on GBL is found to be on average 10-20 cm thicker than on GSL. Overall, this study shows that regression-based algorithms using AMSR-E TB data as input can be used to estimate lake ice thickness routinely on the two large northern lakes.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.C54B..02K
- Keywords:
-
- 0738 CRYOSPHERE / Ice;
- 0746 CRYOSPHERE / Lakes;
- 0758 CRYOSPHERE / Remote sensing;
- 0766 CRYOSPHERE / Thermodynamics