Arctic Sea Ice Classification with the AMSR2 Data

The sea ice classification with the satellite measurements of the Advanced Scanning Microwave Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) is considered relating to three sea ice types — Multi-Year (MY), First Year (FY) and Young (Y) ice. The database of MY, FY and Y sea ice polygons has been collected for winter months of 2020/2021 season. The sea ice maps of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute have been used to confirm the polygon classification and 100% partial sea ice concentration for each of the polygons. The AMSR2 Level 1R measurements data over selected polygons have been processed to calculate the sea ice emission coefficients using recently developed approach to account for the atmospheric microwave radiation and its attenuation of the sea ice microwave signal. Probability density functions (PDFs) have been built and analyzed for the gradient differences (GDs) between vertically polarized sea ice emission coefficients at different channel frequencies. It has been shown that the PDFs for GDs for considered sea ice types do not overlap with each other, and a simple threshold approach allows sea ice type classification. Verification of suggested approach has been done by comparison of classification results with the OSI SAF sea ice type product.