Sea Ice Detection From the RADARSAT Constellation Mission Experiment Data

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) is a new generation of Canadian Synthetic Aperture Radars collecting data with higher spatial and temporal resolutions than previous RADARSAT missions. In this paper, the RCM data are used for the first time to detect sea ice in the Eastern Arctic area with a pixel-based classifier. HH, HV, cross polarization ratio, and Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) texture features are extracted from the dual-polarized RCM data with a medium resolution (50m) for a random forest classification model. The overall detection accuracy (over 90 %) confirms the superior capacity of RCM data for sea ice monitoring.