Simulation of ASIRAS Multilooked Echoes for Snow Covered Sea Ice

We have studied simulation of the ESA's ASIRAS (Airborne SAR/Interferometric Altimeter System) altimeter echoes for snow covered first-year sea ice. Simulated echoes can be used to investigate the relationships between the snow and ice characteristics and the measured echoes, and for the development of range retracking algorithms. Our results show that when snow cover is dry, the ice surface echo dominates. Snow cover properties have a large effect on the ice freeboard estimation from the ASIRAS data.