The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and
sea-ice concentrations

Kern, Stefan; Rösel, Anja; Pedersen, Leif Toudal; Ivanova, Natalia; Saldo, Roberto; Tonboe, Rasmus Tage

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2217-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

Research article

|

26 Sep 2016

Research article |

| 26 Sep 2016

The impact of melt ponds on summertime microwave brightness temperatures and sea-ice concentrations

Stefan Kern, Anja Rösel, Leif Toudal Pedersen, Natalia Ivanova, Roberto Saldo, and Rasmus Tage Tonboe

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Final revised paper (published on 26 Sep 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 15 Jan 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC1: 'melt ponds', Vasiliy Tikhonov, 25 Jan 2016
- AC1: 'reply to tc-2015-202_SC1 by Tikhonov', Stefan Kern, 06 Jun 2016
RC1: 'Anonymous Review of Paper', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Feb 2016
- AC2: 'reply to tc-2015-202_RC1 by anonymous reviewer #1', Stefan Kern, 06 Jun 2016
SC2: 'Review comment', Gregory Flato, 09 Mar 2016
- RC2: 'Review comment', Greg Flato, 11 Mar 2016
- AC3: 'combined reply to tc-2015-202_RC2 and tc-2015-202_SC2 by reviewer #2, Greg Flato', Stefan Kern, 06 Jun 2016
- AC4: 'combined reply to tc-2015-202_RC2 and tc-2015-202_SC2 by reviewer #2, Greg Flato', Stefan Kern, 06 Jun 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Stefan Kern on behalf of the Authors (06 Jun 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Jun 2016) by Edward Hanna

RR by Georg Heygster (06 Jul 2016)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (12 Jul 2016) by Edward Hanna

AR by Stefan Kern on behalf of the Authors (19 Jul 2016)

ED: Publish as is (26 Jul 2016) by Edward Hanna

AR by Stefan Kern on behalf of the Authors (10 Aug 2016)

Short summary

Sea ice, frozen seawater floating on polar oceans, is covered by meltwater puddles, so-called melt ponds, during summer. Methods used to compute Arctic sea-ice concentration (SIC) from microwave satellite data are influenced by melt ponds. We apply eight such methods to one microwave dataset and compare SIC with visible data. We conclude all methods fail to distinguish melt ponds from leads between ice floes; SIC biases are negative (positive) for ponded (non-ponded) sea ice and can exceed 20 %.