Sea Ice Screening Ability in Ku Band and C Band Wind Scatterometry

Abstract. Ocean surface sea ice screening is important for a wide variety of research and applications. While the normalized radar cross-sections (NRCS) have been long applied in sea ice classifications and quantifications, the beam-filling problem still exists. Besides, for the melting ice cover, the NRCS are not providing accurate links to sea ice. However, if considering the NRCS within the traditional wind retrieval unit, despite the existence of fractal sea ice and the different mixing quantities of ice and sea water, there will be signatures in both the derivations from wind retrieval model and the extend of heterogeneity within the unit. The former has been well researched and together with the ice model from scatteroemters, applied now in ice labelling for scatterometer operational wind products in the indicator MLE. In this research, we uncover the properties of the later due to sea ice, in terms of the indicator J_oss. The sea ice and iceberg concentration from products derived in AMSR-2 and Sentinel-1 are applied as references. The scatterometer data are from collocations of C- and Ku-band scatterometer products from ASCAT-A, ASCAT-B, OSCAT-2 and HSCAT. The ice screening ability in combination of MLE and J_oss are concluded. Finally, the iceberg identification potential is discussed along with the application of the joint observations of C- and Ku-band scatteroemter observations.