Validation of a snow water equivalence algorithm over landfast first-year sea ice using RADARSAT-1

Our understanding of snow distribution (i.e., spatial statistical properties) and magnitude (i.e., snow water equivalent (SWE)) in the polar regions is severely restricted due to the heterogeneity, both in space and time, of this solid precipitate. In this paper we present the theoretical framework for linking microwave scattering from a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to the thermodynamic and electrical properties of snow on sea ice. We show how the thermophysical properties at the snow/sea ice interface create a change in scattering, which is statistically proportional to the magnitude of SWE over smooth first-year sea ice (FYI). We use in situ data from the 1999 Collaborative-Interdisciplinary Cryospheric Experiment (C-ICE´99) near Resolute Bay, Nunavut to validate RADARSAT-1 derived SWE estimates for a 100-kM² area of FYI.