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Monitoring Sea Ice Loss with Remote Sensing Techniques

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 February 2025 | Viewed by 1855

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Research & Information Center, Tokai University, Tokyo 108-8619, Japan
Interests: remote sensing on sea ice; environmental change

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Guest Editor
Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
Interests: climate change; remote sensing on sea ice

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Global warming is one of the most serious problems we are facing in the 21st century. Sea ice plays an important role in reflecting solar radiation back into space. The reduction in sea ice has increased the ocean’s absorption of solar radiation, enhancing global warming in what has been regarded as “ice albedo feedback”. Time series of microwave observations from space since the late 1970s have revealed a drastic reduction in the Arctic perennial ice cover, which is now recognized as an indicator of global warming in the IPCC reports. Continued monitoring of changes in the global sea ice cover from space is important because of the expected impacts on the rest of the cryosphere and other regions.

The aim of this special Issue is to focus on techniques for monitoring sea ice extent and thickness using various sensors onboard Earth observation satellites.  The sensors could include, but are not limited to, optical sensors, passive microwave sensors, SAR, and Lidar.  The articles of this Special Issue are expected to be of interest not only to the readers of the journal, but also to scientists who are involved in using remote sensing data in the study of climate and associated environmental changes.

The themes will include “Developing sophisticated techniques for monitoring sea ice loss using various sensors onboard satellites and gaining insights into the causes and potential impacts”. Article types could be original research articles, case reports, and technical notes.

Prof. Dr. Kohei Cho
Dr. Josefino Comiso
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • remote sensing
  • glaciology
  • sea ice
  • ice sheet
  • microwave radiometer
  • optical sensor
  • SAR

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4989 KiB  
Article
Intersensor Calibration of Spaceborne Passive Microwave Radiometers and Algorithm Tuning for Long-Term Sea Ice Trend Analysis Based on AMSR-E Observations
by Mieko Seki, Masahiro Hori, Kazuhiro Naoki, Misako Kachi and Keiji Imaoka
Remote Sens. 2024, 16(19), 3549; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16193549 - 24 Sep 2024
Viewed by 252
Abstract
Sea ice monitoring is key to analyzing the Earth’s climate system. Long-term sea ice extent (SIE) has been continuously monitored using various spaceborne passive microwave radiometers (PMRs) since November 1978. As the lifetime of a satellite is usually approximately 5 years, bias caused [...] Read more.
Sea ice monitoring is key to analyzing the Earth’s climate system. Long-term sea ice extent (SIE) has been continuously monitored using various spaceborne passive microwave radiometers (PMRs) since November 1978. As the lifetime of a satellite is usually approximately 5 years, bias caused by differences in PMRs should be eliminated to obtain objective SIE trends. Most sea ice products have been analyzed for long-term trends with a bias adjustment based on the coarse resolution special sensor microwave imager (SSM/I) in operation for the longest period. However, since 2002, Japanese microwave radiometers of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) series, which have the highest spatial resolution in PMR, have been available. In this study, we developed standardization techniques for processing SIE including calibration of the brightness temperature (TB), tuning the sea ice concentration (SIC) algorithm, and adjusting the SIC threshold to retrieve a consistent SIE trend based on the AMSR for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E, one of the AMSR that operated from May 2002 to October 2011). Analysis results showed that the root-mean-square error between AMSR-E SICs and those of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) was 15%. In this study, SIE was defined as the sum of the areas where the AMSR-E SIC was >15%. When retrieving SIE, we adjusted the SIC threshold for each PMR to be consistent with the SIE calculated based on the 15% SIC threshold for AMSR-E. We then calculated a time-series of the SIE trends over approximately 45 years using the adjusted SIE data. Therefore, we revealed the dramatic decrease in global sea ice extent since 1978. This technique enables retrieval of more accurate long-term sea ice trends for more than half a century in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring Sea Ice Loss with Remote Sensing Techniques)
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21 pages, 4101 KiB  
Article
Two Decades of Arctic Sea-Ice Thickness from Satellite Altimeters: Retrieval Approaches and Record of Changes (2003–2023)
by Sahra Kacimi and Ron Kwok
Remote Sens. 2024, 16(16), 2983; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16162983 - 14 Aug 2024
Viewed by 956
Abstract
There now exists two decades of basin-wide coverage of Arctic sea ice from three dedicated polar-orbiting altimetry missions (ICESat, CryoSat-2, and ICESat-2) launched by NASA and ESA. Here, we review our retrieval approaches and discuss the composite record of Arctic ice thickness (2003–2023) [...] Read more.
There now exists two decades of basin-wide coverage of Arctic sea ice from three dedicated polar-orbiting altimetry missions (ICESat, CryoSat-2, and ICESat-2) launched by NASA and ESA. Here, we review our retrieval approaches and discuss the composite record of Arctic ice thickness (2003–2023) after appending two more years (2022–2023) to our earlier records. The present availability of five years of snow depth estimates—from differencing lidar (ICESat-2) and radar (CryoSat-2) freeboards—have benefited from the concurrent operation of two altimetry missions. Broadly, the dramatic volume loss (5500 km3) and Arctic-wide thinning (0.6 m) captured by ICESat (2003–2009), primarily due to the decline in old ice coverage between 2003 and 2007, has slowed. In the central Arctic, away from the coasts, the CryoSat-2 and shorter ICESat-2 records show near-negligible thickness trends since 2007, where the winter and fall ice thicknesses now hover around 2 m and 1.3 m, from a peak of 3.6 m and 2.7 m in 1980. Ice volume production has doubled between the fall and winter with the faster-growing seasonal ice cover occupying more than half of the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer. Seasonal ice behavior dominates the Arctic Sea ice’s interannual thickness and volume signatures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Monitoring Sea Ice Loss with Remote Sensing Techniques)
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