Ice Sheet and Sea Ice Ultrawideband Microwave radiometric Airborne eXperiment (ISSIUMAX) in Antarctica: first results from Terra Nova Bay

Brogioni, Marco; Andrews, Mark J.; Urbini, Stefano; Jezek, Kenneth C.; Johnson, Joel T.; Leduc-Leballeur, Marion; Macelloni, Giovanni; Ackley, Stephen F.; Bringer, Alexandra; Brucker, Ludovic; Demir, Oguz; Fontanelli, Giacomo; Yardim, Caglar; Kaleschke, Lars; Montomoli, Francesco; Tsang, Leung; Becagli, Silvia; Frezzotti, Massimo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-255-2023

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-255-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-255-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

20 Jan 2023

Research article |

| 20 Jan 2023

Ice Sheet and Sea Ice Ultrawideband Microwave radiometric Airborne eXperiment (ISSIUMAX) in Antarctica: first results from Terra Nova Bay

Marco Brogioni, Mark J. Andrews, Stefano Urbini, Kenneth C. Jezek, Joel T. Johnson, Marion Leduc-Leballeur, Giovanni Macelloni, Stephen F. Ackley, Alexandra Bringer, Ludovic Brucker, Oguz Demir, Giacomo Fontanelli, Caglar Yardim, Lars Kaleschke, Francesco Montomoli, Leung Tsang, Silvia Becagli, and Massimo Frezzotti

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Final revised paper (published on 20 Jan 2023)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 May 2022)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on tc-2022-59', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Oct 2022

The paper is very well written. I only have few comments to be addressed before it can get published. Pleases see attached . Thanks.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-59-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Marco Brogioni, 07 Nov 2022
  
  We provided the replies to RC1 in the supplement file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-59-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on tc-2022-59', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Oct 2022

Review of tc-2022-59 (Brogioni et al., 2022):

General Comments:

This papers reviews results of Ultrawide band radiometry in Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica. This is a fascinating set of results, both on the ground truthing it allows for of orbiting L-band radiometers and as a tool for clarifying processes combining thermal and dielectric gradients (both of which are discussed in this paper), but also the planetary analogs these observations may enable (notably the Juno spacecraft is current engaged in a series of flybys of icy moons near Jupiter, and has a similar instrument, the Multi Wavelength Radiometer, covering a similar frequency band).

I think my major critique would be on the data itself - I am very familiar with the approach of making the data publicly available on acceptance; however what this means is that usability of the data cannot be peer reviewed. I would suggest that the paper should include an explicit pointer to at least an example of these sort of data which is in a format that is identical to the data in this paper, if not the data itself, to allow reviewers to determine if it meets expectations for findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability.

Specific Comments:

Section 5: some illustrative cartoons showing the expected relationship between frequency and temperature for different environments might be helpful.

Appendix B: What is the significance of this? Is there a central repository where someone could download these curated datasets? I would suggest a detailed table in supplementary materials with the granule names themselves to make this more useful.

Technical corrections:

Title: Should be Title case.

Line 30: “mew” should be “new”

Line 139: Young et al., 2017 is probably a better reference than Lilien 2021 for the little Dome C bed rock topography

Lines 250-270: should be broken up into several paragraphs

Figures 5 and 9: the longitude and latitude text is too small to be resolved when printed.

All figures showing brightness temperature as a function of distance: using a linear color map for the different frequencies would better show the gradients in the spectra.

Figure 6 b: is it possible to show the measurement uncertainties in brightness temperature on this plot (as was done for Figure 15)?

Young, D. A., Roberts, J. L., Ritz, C., Frezzotti, M., Quartini, E., Cavitte, M. G. P., Tozer, C. R., Steinhage, D., Urbini, S., Corr, H. F. J., Van Ommen, T., and Blankenship, D. D., 2017, High resolution boundary conditions of an old ice target near Dome C, Antarctica, 11, 1--15, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1897-2017

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-59-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Marco Brogioni, 07 Nov 2022
  
  We provided the replies to RC2 in the supplement file.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-59-AC2

Peer review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (22 Nov 2022) by Ted Maksym

AR by Marco Brogioni on behalf of the Authors (29 Nov 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (16 Dec 2022) by Ted Maksym

Short summary

In 2018 the first Antarctic campaign of UWBRAD was carried out. UWBRAD is a new radiometer able to collect microwave spectral signatures over 0.5–2 GHz, thus outperforming existing similar sensors. It allows us to probe thicker sea ice and ice sheet down to the bedrock. In this work we tried to assess the UWBRAD potentials for sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves and buried lakes. We also highlighted the wider range of information the spectral signature can provide to glaciological studies.