Determination of ice age: a proposed scheme for a RADARSAT sea ice Geophysical Processor System

Proposes a Lagrangian ice motion tracker to follow the trajectory of ice particles at initially fixed grid points in the winter Arctic. From the displacement data, the authors can derive the area changes associated with a grid cell which they define as the area enclosed by straight line-segments connecting four grid points. Any new area created during the time interval between SAR observations contains new sea ice with an age uncertainty equivalent to that of the time interval. During the next time step, the age of this ice is incremented by the size of the time step. A decrease in area is accounted for by ridging the youngest ice. An ice age histogram for accounting for the changes in area is constructed from a series of ice motion observations. A scheme for extended temporal observation of the sea ice cover is proposed. This age distribution can be converted into ice thickness if appropriate environmental conditions are available. The authors propose that this scheme be implemented in the sea ice Geophysical Processor System for monitoring of ice age and thickness using RADARSAT data