Sea Ice Thickness Measurement by Ground Penetrating Radar for Ground Truth of Microwave Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Observation of sea ice thickness is one of key issues to understand regional effect of global warming. One of approaches to monitor sea ice in large area is microwave remote sensing data analysis. However, ground truth must be necessary to discuss the effectivity of this kind of approach. The conventional method to acquire ground truth of ice thickness is drilling ice layer and directly measuring the thickness by a ruler. However, this method is destructive, time-consuming and limited spatial resolution. Although there are several methods to acquire ice thickness in non-destructive way, ground penetrating radar (GPR) can be effective solution because it can discriminate snow-ice and ice-sea water interface. In this paper, we carried out GPR measurement in Lake Saroma for relatively large area (200m by 300m, approximately) aiming to obtain grand truth for remote sensing data.. GPR survey was conducted at 5 locations in the area. The direct measurement was also conducted simultaneously in order to calibrate GPR data for thickness estimation and to validate the result. Although GPR Bscan image obtained from 600MHz contains the reflection which may come from a structure under snow, the origin of the reflection is not obvious. Therefore, further analysis and interpretation of the GPR image, such as numerical simulation, additional signal processing and use of 200MHz antenna, are required to move on thickness estimation.

On the retrieval of sea-ice thickness using SMOS polarization differences

“…These can be categorized into invasive (in situ on-ice measurements) and non-invasive (remote-sensing) methods. Remote-sensing methods include passive microwave radiometry (Kaleschke and others, 2012; Nakata and others, 2018), helicopter-based electromagnetic (EM) induction system (Haas and others, 2009; Hunkeler and others, 2016), ice freeboard measurements from Cryosat-2 radar altimeter (Laxon and others, 2013; Yi and others, 2019), ICESat laser altimeter (Kwok and Rothrock, 2009; Nihashi and others, 2018), upward-looking sonar (ULS) (Hudson, 1990; Kwok, 2018), Global Navigation Satellite Systems-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) (Li and others, 2017) and Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) (Matsumoto and others, 2018). While other remote-sensing methods are either swath-limited (e.g.…”

Ground Penetrating Radar Data Interpretation Using Electromagnetic Field Analysis for Sea Ice Thickness Measurement

“…On Feb. 2018, we carried out GPR measurement in Lake Saroma, which is a brackish lake, for relatively large area (200m by 300m, approximately) aiming to obtain grand truth for remote sensing data (Matsumoto et al, 2018). Although several Bscan images could be obtained, it was difficult to identify where reflection signals come from.…”