Estimation of sea ice thickness in the Arctic Sea using polarimetric parameters of C- and X-band space-borne SAR data

In this study, we derived the relationship between target depolarization factor and physical parameters of sea ice in order to estimate the thickness using dual-polarization C-and X-band space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. The target depolarization factor, the cross-polarized ratio of C-band SAR data, which can explain the target depolarization effect, were strongly related to changes in surface roughness of thick First-Year Ice (FYI) and Multi-Year Ice (MYI), and were almost insensitive to variations in the surface dielectric constant of thick FYI and MYI and the incidence angle of C-band SAR data. This relationship showed a high correlation between target depolarization factor of C-band SAR data, the cross-polarized ratio, and thick FYI and MYI thickness. We validated the estimated method using RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X data and ground-truth data acquired in the Arctic Sea off the northern coast of Greenland.