The Airborne Cryospheric SAR System (CryoSAR): Characterizing Cold Season Hydrology Using Ku and L-Band Polarimetric SAR Observations

The airborne cryospheric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, called CryoSAR, has been developed to advance our scientific expertise in estimating snow accumulation on land, lakes and sea ice, characterizing freshwater ice and sea ice properties, and monitoring the freeze-thaw state of soils. Currently, the dual frequency Ku (13.5 GHz) and L-band (1.3 GHz) instrument is focused on making backscatter and phase measurements of snow and ice on land and lakes to estimate total snow accumulation. This paper describes the core system characteristics, the instrument operation, and SAR data processing that is conducted to achieve science ready data. We illustrate the system’s capability to produce science-ready data using examples from a field experiment conducted in Ontario during the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24. CryoSAR flights were made over a farm field site and a lake site in Ontario with field measurements. Calibrated Ku and L-band polarimetric data are presented and illustrate the sensitivity of the signals to surface and backscatter processes on the ground.