Arctic sea ice signatures: L-band brightness temperature sensitivity comparison using two radiation transfer models

Richter, Friedrich; Drusch, Matthias; Kaleschke, Lars; Maaß, Nina; Tian-Kunze, Xiangshan; Mecklenburg, Susanne

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-921-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-921-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-921-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

14 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 14 Mar 2018

Arctic sea ice signatures: L-band brightness temperature sensitivity comparison using two radiation transfer models

Friedrich Richter, Matthias Drusch, Lars Kaleschke, Nina Maaß, Xiangshan Tian-Kunze, and Susanne Mecklenburg

Data sets

ORAS uncertainties ECMWF https://www.ecmwf. int/en/forecasts/datasets/browse-reanalysis-datasets

Short summary

L-band (1.4 GHz) brightness temperatures from ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity SMOS mission have been used to derive thin sea ice thickness. However, the brightness temperature measurements can potentially be assimilated directly in forecasting systems reducing the data latency and providing a more consistent first guess. We studied the forward (observation) operator that translates geophysical sea ice parameters from the ECMWF Ocean ReAnalysis Pilot 5 (ORAP5) into brightness temperatures.