Articles | Volume 19, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4167-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4167-2025
Research article
 | 
02 Oct 2025
Research article |  | 02 Oct 2025

Multi-frequency altimetry snow depth estimates over heterogeneous snow-covered Antarctic summer sea ice – Part 1: C∕S-, Ku-, and Ka-band airborne observations

Renée Mie Fredensborg Hansen, Henriette Skourup, Eero Rinne, Arttu Jutila, Isobel R. Lawrence, Andrew Shepherd, Knut Vilhelm Høyland, Jilu Li, Fernando Rodriguez-Morales, Sebastian Bjerregaaard Simonsen, Jeremy Wilkinson, Gaelle Veyssiere, Donghui Yi, René Forsberg, and Taniâ Gil Duarte Casal

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Cited articles

Armitage, T. W. K. and Ridout, A. L.: Arctic sea ice freeboard from AltiKa and comparison with CryoSat-2 and Operation IceBridge, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 6724–6731, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL064823, 2015. a, b, c, d
Arndt, S. and Paul, S.: Variability of Winter Snow Properties on Different Spatial Scales in the Weddell Sea, J. Geophys. Res.-Oceans, 123, 8862–8876, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JC014447, 2018. a
Arndt, S., Haas, C., Meyer, H., Peeken, I., and Krumpen, T.: Recent observations of superimposed ice and snow ice on sea ice in the northwestern Weddell Sea, The Cryosphere, 15, 4165–4178, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-4165-2021, 2021. a
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Barber, D., Fung, A., Grenfell, T., Nghiem, S., Onstott, R., Lytle, V., Perovich, D., and Gow, A.: The role of snow on microwave emission and scattering over first-year sea ice, IEEE T. Geosci. Remote, 36, 1750–1763, https://doi.org/10.1109/36.718643, 1998. a
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Short summary
An airborne campaign collected unprecedented coincident multi-frequency radar and lidar data over sea ice along a CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 (CRYO2ICE) orbit in the Weddell Sea, useful for evaluating microwave snow penetration. Ka-band and Ku-band had limited penetration with significant contributions from the air–snow interface, contradicting traditional assumptions with discrepancies between commonly used C/S-band "snow-radar" methodologies, all challenging comparisons of airborne and spaceborne estimates.
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