Radar backscattering from artificially grown sea ice

Fine-resolution X-band backscatter measurements were made at the US Army Cold Region Research and Engineering Laboratory in Jan. 1987. Backscatter data were collected from unmodified smooth ice and snow-covered ice and from ice from which the snow had been removed (slightly roughened ice). The results indicate that vertically polarized returns were consistently higher than horizontally polarized echoes from both the slightly roughened and snow-covered saline ice. A 6.5-cm-thick dry snow layer altered the σ^o of the original smooth-surfaced saline ice only slightly, but introduced a noticeable volume scattering component. It is shown that although substantial agreement exists between the bare first-year ice measurements and commonly used surface-scatter model predictions, a complete model of first-year ice must include a volume-scatter contribution