Sea Ice Concentration and Sea Ice Extent Mapping with the Fsscat Mission: A Neural Network Approach

Knowledge about sea ice concentration and extent in polar regions is of great interest both for economic interests, and as a proxy of the climate change. Retrieved maps are based on data from microwave radiometers, which are currently provided by large satellite missions. Nowadays, CubeSats have proven to be a cost-effective alternative. Due to their low cost, they can be launched in large constellations to obtain high spatial coverage and daily revisit. This study presents a neural network approach to generate sea ice concentration and sea ice extension maps using the L-band microwave radiometer, and the GNSS-Reflectometer data from the FMPL-2 instrument onboard
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Cat-5/A, one of the two CubeSats of the FSSCat mission. The results obtained during the first 2 months of the mission are presented.