On the statistical relationship between sea ice freeboard and C-band microwave backscatter – a case study with Sentinel-1  and  Operation IceBridge

Liu, Siqi; Xu, Shiming; Guo, Wenkai; Fan, Yanfei; Zhou, Lu; Landy, Jack; Johansson, Malin; Zhu, Weixin; Petty, Alek

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5175-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5175-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5175-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

Research article

|

29 Oct 2025

Research article |

| 29 Oct 2025

On the statistical relationship between sea ice freeboard and C-band microwave backscatter – a case study with Sentinel-1 and Operation IceBridge

Siqi Liu, Shiming Xu, Wenkai Guo, Yanfei Fan, Lu Zhou, Jack Landy, Malin Johansson, Weixin Zhu, and Alek Petty

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5175-2025-supplement

Data sets

IceBridge ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength. (ILATM1B, Version 2) M. Studinger https://doi.org/10.5067/19SIM5TXKPGT

IceBridge Narrow Swath ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength. (ILNSA1B, Version 2) M. Studinger https://doi.org/10.5067/CXEQS8KVIXEI

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Height. (ATL07, Version 6) R. Kwok et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL07.006

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Freeboard. (ATL10, Version 6) R. Kwok et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL10.006

Global Sea Ice Drift Climate Data Record Release v1.0 - Multimission OSI SAF https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0012

High-Resolution Snow Freeboard Maps from Operation IceBridge (OIB) ATM Measurements and Sea Ice Type Products based on Sentinel-1 data S. Liu et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14930672

Short summary

In this study, we explore the potential of using synthetic aperture radars (SAR) to predict the sea ice height measurements by the airborne campaign of Operation IceBridge. In particular, we predict the meter-scale sea ice height with the statistical relationship between the two, overcoming the resolution limitation of SAR images from Sentinel-1 satellites. The prediction and ice drift correction algorithms can be applied to the extrapolation of ICESat-2 measurements in the Arctic region.