Chinese Journal of Polar Research

Chinese Journal of Polar Research ›› 2020, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (3): 336-342.DOI: 10.13679/j.jdyj.20190063

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Extracting freeze/melt extent of Greenland ice sheet from Synthetic Aperture Radar images

Zhao Mengxue1,2, Fu Wenxue1, Sun Yanwu1,3, Li Xinwu1   

  1. 1.Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, CAS, Beijing 100094, China;
    2.College of Geomatics, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Shandong 266590, China;
    3.College of Geomatics, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Anhui 232000, China.
  • Received:2019-10-30 Revised:2020-01-16 Online:2020-09-30 Published:2020-09-30
  • Contact: Wenxue Fu

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Abstract:

Data on freezing and melting of polar ice sheets are important for understanding ice sheet stability and ice sheet response to climate change. We examined relationships between ice sheet freeze/melt extent, HH and HV polarization amplitudes and HH/HV values using Sentinel-1A IW SAR images from 2016, AWS data and MODIS temperature products. We found that freeze/melt extent is negatively correlated with HH and HV polarization amplitudes and positively correlated with HH/HV value, and R2 is higher in the correlation with HH/HV value (> 0.6) than that with polarization amplitudes. Using MODIS temperature products, we established five HH/HV thresholds to measure freeze/melt extent of the Greenland ice sheet. Using MODIS temperature products, we found that the accuracy of extracting freeze/melt extent using HH/HV value is 86.8%.

Key words: Greenland, freezing and melting in ice sheet, freeze/melt extent, IW SAR