A diurnal difference indicator for freeze-thaw monitoring from Ku band scatterometer applied within the Siberia II project

摘要

We present and assess a diurnal difference indicator that is related directly to the seasonal freeze-thaw effects, focusing, in This work, primarily on the onset of snowmelt and terrestrial thawing. In order to be able to provide a level of certainty with the indicator our approach is based upon the development, and application, of a noise model that accounts for instrument noise, speckle, spatial heterogeneity, "environmental" noise and the influence of azimuth angle at which the measurement was acquired.