Physics – Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Scientific paper
2012-02-18
Physics
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Scientific paper
Microwave emissivity models of sea ice are poorly validated empirically. Typical validation studies involve using averaged or stereotyped profiles of ice parameters against averaged radiance measurements. Measurement sites are rarely matched and even less often point-by-point. Because of saline content, complex permittivity of sea ice is highly variable and difficult to predict. Therefore, to check the validity of a typical, plane-parallel, radiative-transfer-based ice emissivity model, we apply it to fresh water ice instead of salt-water ice. Radiance simulations for lake ice are compared with measurements over Lake Superior from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on EOS (AMSR-E). AMSR-E measurements are also collected over Antarctic icepack. For each pixel, a thermodynamic model is driven by four years of European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data and the resulting temperature profiles used to drive the emissivity model. The results suggest that the relatively simple emissivity model is a good fit to the data. Both cases, however, show large discrepencies whose most likely explanation is scattering both within the ice sheet as well as by cloudy atmospheres. Scattering is neglected by the model. Further work is needed to refine the scattering component of ice emissivity models and to generate accurate estimates of complex permittivities within sea ice.
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