Evaluation of wet snow dielectric mixing models for L-band radiometric measurement of liquid water content in Greenland's percolation zone

Hossan, Alamgir; Colliander, Andreas; Schlegel, Nicole-Jeanne; Harper, Joel; Andrews, Lauren; Kolassa, Jana; Miller, Julie Z.; Cullather, Richard

doi:10.5194/tc-19-6077-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-6077-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-6077-2025

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

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

21 Nov 2025

Research article |

| 21 Nov 2025

Evaluation of wet snow dielectric mixing models for L-band radiometric measurement of liquid water content in Greenland's percolation zone

Alamgir Hossan, Andreas Colliander, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, Joel Harper, Lauren Andrews, Jana Kolassa, Julie Z. Miller, and Richard Cullather

Data sets

SMAP Radiometer Twice-Daily rSIR-Enhanced EASE-Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperatures (NSIDC-0738, Version 2) M. J. Brodzik et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/YAMX52BXFL10

PROMICE and GC-Net automated weather station data in Greenland P. How et al. https://doi.org/10.22008/FK2/IW73UU

The SUMup collaborative database: Surface mass balance, subsurface temperature and density measurements from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (2024 release), version: urn:uuid:35eb18e0-8107-4458-bc62-3cb194bb395f Baptiste Vandecrux et al. https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BR5M

Dataset for Evaluating Wet Snow Dielectric Models with L-Band Radiometry in Greenland Firn Alamgir Hossan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17195725

Model code and software

HossanAlamgir/DielectricModels4WetSnow: Revised Main Script to Generate All Figures Alamgir Hossan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17478663

MATLAB code for firn thermodynamic and hydrological modelling S. Marshall https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/WRWJAZ

Short summary

Microwave L-band radiometry offers a promising new tool for estimating the total surface-to-subsurface liquid water amount (LWA) in the snow and firn in polar ice sheets. An accurate modelling of wet snow effective permittivity is a key to this. Here, we evaluated the performance of ten commonly used microwave dielectric mixing models for estimating LWA in the percolation zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet to help an appropriate choice of dielectric mixing model for LWA retrieval algorithms.