The influence of snow microstructure on dual-frequency radar measurements in a tundra environment

REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT

卷:215

Article

King, Joshua¹  Derksen, Chris¹  Toose, Peter¹  Langlois, Alexandre²  Larsen, Chris³  Lemmetyinen, Juha^4,5  Marsh, Phil⁶  Montpetit, Benoit⁷  Roy, Alexandre⁸  Rutter, Nick⁹  Sturm, Matthew³ 

[1] Environm & Climate Change Canada, Div Climate Res, Toronto, ON, Canada

[2] Univ Sherbrooke, Ctr Applicat & Rech Teledetect, Sherbrooke, PQ, Canada

[3] Univ Alaska Fairbanks, Inst Geophys, Fairbanks, AK 99775 USA

[4] Finnish Meteorol Inst, Arctic Res, Helsinki, Finland

[5] Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Remote Sensing & Digital Earth, Beijing, Peoples R China

[6] Wilfrid Laurier Univ, Cold Reg Ctr, Waterloo, ON, Canada

[7] Environm & Climate Change Canada, Wildlife & Landscape Sci Div, Ottawa, ON, Canada

[8] Univ Montreal, Dept Geog, Montreal, PQ, Canada

[9] Northumbria Univ, Dept Geog & Environm Sci, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear, England

关键词: Snow;    SWE;    Radar;    SAR;    Tundra;    Arctic;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.rse.2018.05.028

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Recent advancement in the understanding of snow-microwave interactions has helped to isolate the considerable potential for radar-based retrieval of snow water equivalent (SWE). There are however, few datasets available to address spatial uncertainties, such as the influence of snow microstructure, at scales relevant to space-borne application. In this study we introduce measurements from SnowSAR, an airborne, dual-frequency (9.6 and 17.2 GHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR), to evaluate high resolution (10 m) backscatter within a snow-covered tundra basin. Coincident in situ surveys at two sites characterize a generally thin snowpack (50 cm) interspersed with deeper drift features. Structure of the snowpack is found to be predominantly wind slab (65%) with smaller proportions of depth hoar underlain (35%). Objective estimates of snow microstructure (exponential correlation length; l(ex)), show the slab layers to be 2.8 times smaller than the basal depth hoar. In situ measurements are used to parametrize the Microwave Emission Model of Layered Snowpacks (MEMLS3&a) and compare against collocated SnowSAR backscatter. The evaluation shows a scaling factor (phi) between 1.37 and 1.08, when applied to input of l(ex), minimizes MEMLS root mean squared error to < 1.1 dB. Model sensitivity experiments demonstrate contrasting contributions from wind slab and depth hoar components, where wind rounded microstructures are identified as a strong control on observed backscatter. Weak sensitivity of SnowSAR to spatial variations in SWE is explained by the smaller contributing microstructures of the wind slab.

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