Sea Ice Thickness Estimation From TechDemoSat-1 Data

In this paper, an effective model is developed for retrieving sea ice thickness (SIT) from scattering coefficient (σ
⁰
) produced with TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) data. Here, σ
⁰
is formulated as the product of the propagation loss due to SIT and the reflection coefficient of underlying seawater. In application, σ
⁰
at specular point was firstly generated based on radar equation using TDS-1 data. Next, SIT was calculated from TDS-1 σ
⁰
using the proposed model, and verified with reference SIT data obtained by the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. The data used here were from measurements over the year of 2015. Comparison results showed a good consistency between the derived and reference SIT, with a correlation coefficient of 0.90 and a root mean square difference of 8.68 cm, which demonstrates the potential of developed model and the utility of TDS-1 data for SIT retrieval.