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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-4775</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Wind-Informed Bayesian Classification of L-band SAR Imagery for Sea Ice and Open Water Separation</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Karlsen</surname>
<given-names>Truls Thorsen</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9362-8671</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lohse</surname>
<given-names>Johannes</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8038-8572</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Scharien</surname>
<given-names>Randall</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2761-4809</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Johansson</surname>
<given-names>Malin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0129-2239</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Doulgeris</surname>
<given-names>Anthony Paul</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9345-6896</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Physics and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Nipaluna/Hobart, Tasmania</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>21</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>28</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Truls Thorsen Karlsen et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4775/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4775/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4775/egusphere-2026-4775.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4775/egusphere-2026-4775.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>We present a robust, incidence angle (IA) and wind speed aware model for separating sea ice from open water and providing high resolution sea ice concentration (SIC) estimates from L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, with potential climate study and operational benefits. By treating open water as a wind speed-dependent class in an established IA-aware Bayesian maximum likelihood ice type classifier, we account for the wind-driven open water backscatter variability by using external wind information. This method circumvents the need for the extensive training datasets or accurate geophysical model functions (GMFs) typically required by established C-band ice/water separation algorithms. To demonstrate this approach, we utilize wide-swath dual-polarized (HH/HV) L-band SAR data from the ALOS-2 mission. The proposed method provides high accuracy during the challenging melt period, achieving high Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) scores (MCC&amp;gt;0.800), and consistently outperforms passive microwave radiometer (PMW) products during this period. During winter conditions, weak sea ice backscatter and system noise limitations hindered reliable ice/water separation (MCC=0.506). We compare our proposed method to a baseline model without incorporated external wind information, and find that the wind-informed classifier achieves consistently higher classification accuracies. Our results demonstrate that integrating external wind data allows for robust, high resolution ice/water separation in L-band SAR imagery during melting conditions based purely on backscatter intensity, removing the need for computationally heavy textural features.</p>
</abstract>
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