A combined remote sensing/modelling approach for the retrieval of sea ice thickness in East Antarctica

TL;DRAbstract

Sea ice thickness is an essential parameter for the estimation of energy, mass and momentum exchange and sea ice mass balance in the Southern Hemisphere. In situ methods of estimating the ice thickness distribution cannot provide the necessary areal coverage, while the coarse resolution of numerical models is unsuitable for parameterising small-scale processes. Remote sensing technology has the potential to address these issues of areal coverage and spatial resolution. A procedure for estimating the distribution of sea ice thickness using remote sensing data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor is presented. This procedure is based on the method described by Yu and Rothrock [1996] for Arctic sea ice and relies upon the assumptions a) that the surface temperature of thin sea ice is closely related to its thickness and b) that there is a linear vertical temperature gradient across the recently-formed sea ice. Considerable modifications have been made to the Yu and Rot

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