Probabilistic Inference Method to Discriminate Closed Water from Sea Ice Using SENTINEL-1 Sar Signatures

Consistent sea ice monitoring requires accurate estimates of sea ice concentration. Current retrieval algorithms are based on low-resolution microwave radiometry data with limited penetration depth and are unable to resolve surface characteristics of sea ice in sufficient detail which is necessary to discriminate intact sea ice from closed water. Important information about surface roughness conditions are contained in the distribution of radar backscattering images which can be - in principle - used to detect melt ponds and different sea ice types. In this work, a two-step probabilistic approach based on Expectation-Maximization and Bayesian inference considers the spatial and statistical characteristics of medium-resolution daily-available Sentinel-1 SAR images. The presented method segments sea ice into a number of separable classes and enables to discriminate surface water from the remaining sea ice types.