Study on the sea ice thickness observation in the Sea of Okhotsk by using dual-frequency and fully polarimetric airborne SAR (Pi-SAR) data

The Sea of Okhotsk is located in the most southerly region of the Northern Hemisphere in which sea ice exists during winter. Since the area and volume of the sea ice in this region are related to climate change locally as well as globally, it is important to develop methods for monitoring sea ice parameters around this region. Since Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can observe continuously in any weather conditions, it is useful for observing the sea ice covered region. In order to investigate the possibilities of dual frequency and polarimetric SAR to monitor the sea ice, we derived the relation between backscattering coefficients each polarization and sea ice physical parameters, and then we proposed a sea ice classification using a polarimetric decomposition and a sea ice thickness estimation using the backscatter ratio.