The significance of the snow cover on sea ice to microwave scattering at 5.3 GHz

To successfully invert components of the marine cryosphere energy balance using active microwave remote sensing will require knowledge of the structural interrelationships between snow cover geophysics and the interaction of microwave energy. In this paper the authors present results of the geophysical (snow density, depth, grain morphology, and salinity) and electrical (dielectric permittivity and loss) properties of a snow cover on sea ice over the seasonal transition from winter to advanced melt. These data are used to drive a coupled volume and surface scattering model for a snow covered first-year sea ice surface. The model results and implications of sensitivity trials using these models, are compared with observations of the scattering surface using the European Earth Resourses Satellite-1 (ERS-1) synthetic aperture radar (SAR)