Retrieval of snow depth on sea ice in the arctic from FY3B/MWRI

摘要

Given the high albedo and low thermal conductivity, snow on sea ice is regarded as one of the key reasons for the amplification of the warming in polar regions. This study focused on the retrieval of snow depth on sea ice from brightness temperatures of the Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI) on board the FengYun (FY)-3B satellite. After cross calibrated to the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) Level 2A data, the MWRI brightness temperatures were applied to calculate the snow depths on sea ice according to the proportional relationship between the snow depth and the surface scattering in 18.7 and 36.5 GHz. The results were compared with the snow depths from two data sets: IceBridge ICDIS4 data set and the AMSR-E Level 3 Sea Ice products. It is proved that the method taken in this study is feasible and the results are reasonable.