Monitoring of sea ice around Wrangel Island using dual-polarized data from Sentinel-1 constellation

Abstract

Monitoring of sea ice in the Arctic region is essential for environmental studies and ship navigation. Polar-orbiting satellites are efficient to monitor the sea ice because of their capability to frequently acquire data in polar region. Among the satellite sensors, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is considered as one of effective sensors to monitor the earth hence it has been used by many scientists to explore sea ice. Sentinel-1, constellation of two satellites (Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B), can capture images in Arctic region up to 28 times a day since these are in a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit with a 12 day repeat cycle and 175 orbits per cycle. In this study, dual-polarized (HH/HV) data which are consisted of 40 scenes acquired in the extra wide swath mode from 4 December 2016 to 2 January 2017 cover the East Siberian Sea around Wrangel Island were used. The method for discrimination between sea ice and water is based on the regression analysis using HH and HV polarization data. Using this method, sea ice was differentiated and mapped. In order to verity the results and determine the temporal changes of sea ice, all of the visualized results were compared with sea ice concentration products of GCOM-W1/AMSR2 which was reproduced by Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) using dynamic composite algorithm. The results shows that sea ice was well described with the detail characteristics of seong the satellite sensors, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is considered as one of effective sensors to monitor the earth hence it has been used by many scientists to explore sea ice. Sentinel-1, constellation of two satellites (Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B), can capture images in Arctic region up to 28 times a day since these are in a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit with a 12 day repeat cycle and 175 orbits per cycle. In this study, dual-polarized (HH/HV) data which are consisted of 40 scenes acquired in the extra wide swath mode from 4 December 2016 to 2 January 2017 cover the East Siberian Sea around Wrangel Island were used. The method for discrimination between sea ice and water is based on the regression analysis using HH and HV polarization data. Using this method, sea ice was differentiated and mapped. In order to verity the results and determine the temporal changes of sea ice, all of the visualized results were compared with sea ice concentration products of GCOM-W1/AMSR2 which was reproduced by Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) using dynamic composite algorithm. The results shows that sea ice was well described with the detail characteristics of sea ice