Monitoring antarctic ice sheet melting periods with SSM/119H Ghz data and time series analysis

We developed a new method to monitor the ice sheet melting periods with passive microwave measurements. Our method combined the original brightness temperature time series with those simulated by time series simulation software package TIMESAT in order to obtain a time series with similar behaviour, but less noise. A generalized Gaussian model was used to classify the pixels to wet and dry snow. Based on the steep rise and drop of the new time series, we detected the onset and end of the Antarctic ice sheet melting from 1988 to 2008. The results indicated that the whole Antarctic experienced a deceasing melting during the 20 years. The Antarctic Peninsula region exhibited a long and stable melt occurrence, in comparison with which the Ross Ice Shelf has the nearly shortest melt duration and the largest variability in melt extent.