SAR Ice Thickness Mapping in the Beaufort Sea Using Wave Dispersion in Pancake Ice-A Case Study with Intensive Ground Truth

Pancake and frazil ice represent an important component of the Arctic and Antarctic cryosphere. In particular, pancake ice is the result of a freezing process that takes place in turbulent surface conditions, typically associated with wind and wave fields. The retrieval of its thickness by remote sensing is, in general, a very difficult task. In this paper the change in dispersion of ocean waves as they penetrate into pancake ice is considered so as to gain insight into ice thickness estimation. The spectral changes in wave spectra from imagery provided by space-borne SAR systems (Cosmo-SkyMed satellites) were used to retrieve pancake ice thickness in conjunction with the Sikuliaq research cruise in the Beaufort Sea during October 2015. Inversion procedures were applied to this aim and results were compared with the rich dataset collected in situ through the use of wave buoys and ice thickness measurements.