Estimating snow accumulation on Greenland from SSM/I radiometer data

Author

Pack, Jed D. ; Jensen, Michael A.

Author_Institution

Center for Earth Remote Sensing, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

946

Abstract

This paper discusses a new method for determining snow accumulation on the Greenland ice sheet using passive radiometer data. The algorithm exploits high spatial correlation observed in brightness temperatures for adjacent pixels from SSM/I data to iteratively remove the effect of surface temperature and emissivity variation. This processed data reveals an exponential change in brightness temperature with time, with the time constant of this exponential proportional to the accumulation rate. Representative accumulation rates obtained using the method are shown to agree well with existing accumulation maps

Keywords

hydrological techniques; millimetre wave measurement; radiometry; remote sensing; snow; Greenland; SSM/I radiometer data; brightness temperatures; emissivity variation; ice sheet; passive radiometer data; remote sensing; snow accumulation; spatial correlation; surface temperature; Backscatter; Brightness temperature; Earth; Ice; Iterative algorithms; Radar cross section; Radar scattering; Radiometry; Remote sensing; Snow;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976689

Filename

976689