Abstract: In the region where the East Siberia Sea and the Chukchi Sea join at the Arctic Northeast Passage, four Radarsat-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images were used to obtain the sea ice concentration (SIC) through image classification. The NASA TEAM algorithm was employed to retrieve the SIC in the corresponding area based on the brightness temperature data of the scanning microwave radiometer onboard the satellite HY-2. The SIC product of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) released by the Nation Snow and Ice Data Center was used for comparison. An analysis of the SIC revealed that the SIC distribution trends obtained by the SAR images and the SSMIS were in agreement. In the marginal ice zone (MIZ), the SIC derived from the SAR imagery was higher than that retrieved from HY-2 and the SSMIS, implying that SAR imagery is advantageous when observing small ice floes in the MIZ. Of the three data sources, the SIC retrievals of HY-2 were closest to the SSMIS because they had the same initial spatial resolution (25 km), and the correlation between the HY-2 and SAR results was similar to that between the SSMIS and SAR results. However, in the ice edge, the retrievals of HY-2 were lower than the SAR and SSMIS results. This was caused by the high water vapor concentration in the air at the ice edge; this issue should be addressed when improving the retrieval algorithm of the HY-2 microwave radiometer in the future.

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