Abstract: The Chinese marine satellite (HY-2) was successfully launched on 16 August 2011. We investigated an algorithm for sea ice concentration retrieval, based on brightness temperature data from the HY-2 scanning radiometer. In this study, the tie-points for brightness temperatures were selected based on statistical analysis of the polarization gradient ratio and the spectral gradient ratio over typical areas. The thresholds of two weather filters were determined to reduce the atmospheric effect over the open ocean. The total ice concentration over the Arctic in 2012 was calculated and compared with two existing operational data sets from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the University of Bremen. The result of the comparison showed that the calculated sea ice concentration from the HY-2 radiometer data were comparable with ideal values from three typical ice regions in the Arctic Ocean. Our results were also in good agreement with two operational products. Our study demonstrated that HY-2 scanning radiometer data and our retrieval algorithm adapted from the NASA algorithm could be used for operational sea ice services in the Arctic Ocean.

Key words: HY-2, scanning radiometer, sea ice concentration, retrieval, Arctic