Surface Melt Induced Inaccuracies in the Antarctic Sea Ice Concentration Inferred from Optical and Passive Microwave Remote Sensing Data

Antarctic sea ice is generally considered to be free from surface melt, as opposed to the Arctic sea ice where surface melt is prevalent during summer. In this work, we present recent high-resolution Sentinel-2 images which confirm the presence of melt ponds also on the Antarctic sea ice. We employ an optical melt pond fraction retrieval applied to Sentinel-3 data to investigate occurrences of surface melt in the vicinity of Lützow-Holm Bay where sea ice ponding has been confirmed in situ. Sea ice surface melt has the potential to disrupt passive microwave sea ice concentration product. We focus on an area of land fast ice with confirmed 100% ice concentration to highlight this effect on real data.