Floating Ice: Progress in Addressing Science Goals

Transcription

1 Polar Floating Ice: Progress in Addressing Science Goals Stephen Howell 1, Leif Toudal Pedersen 2 and Roberto Saldo 3 1 Environment Canada, Climate Research Division, Toronto, Canada 2 Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark 3 Technical University of Denmark, Denmark PSTG SAR CWG-4 Meeting, DLR, 8-9 Oct., 2015

2 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

3 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

4 Scientific requirements for studying floating 1. Establish a multi-agency plan for acquiring contiguous (seamless) six days repeat pan- Arctic SAR imaging at consistent polarization combination with view to expanding to an intermediate goal of less than three days repeat in future with rightlooking Sentinel-1 (S-1), RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM), etc.; and subsequently sub-daily data with C-, X-, S-, L-band SAR combined data sources

5 Scientific requirements for studying floating 2. Establish Arctic Tundra lakes and river monitoring sites, as extension of sea ice coverage. 3. Assure continuity in all-weather ice concentration, extent, motion and thickness data in support of the sea ice climate data time to secure the sea ice Essential Climate Variable (GCOS, 2010)

6 Scientific requirements for studying floating 4. Coordinate with field campaigns, ice camps and drifting buoys to maximise synergies and product validation possibilities (and uncertainty estimates).

7 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

8 First ice chart from Sentinel-1A data Sentinel-1a was launched in April 2014 The first Sentinel-1 sea-ice chart was drawn by DMI S1A image :10 UTC, EWS, HH

9 Iceberg detection (Disko Bay example) Icebergs in Disko Bay, Sentinel 1A, :10 UTC, EWS, HH+HV Icebergs show up pink, sea-ice in bluish colors when using dual polarisation Single pol HH Dual pol HH+HV Jakobshavn glacier pouring icebergs into Disko Bay Zoom into sea ice and iceberg mix Icebergs are pink in dual pol composite

10 Potential icebergs Daily Sentinel-1A Iceberg maps DMI delivers maps of iceberg density on a 10x10 kilometer grid to Copernicus With the availability of Sentinel-1 we have developed a daily iceberg map product (see figure) The red dots are detected icebergs, and the numbers in the frames show number of hours since last S1A image of the area Some of the potential icebergs may be ships, the detection algorithm cannot distinguish

11 Ice drift from Sentinel-1 Sentinel-1 coverage on September 30, 2015 and ice drift vectors between September 29 and 30 ENVISAT ASAR data allowed development of methods and derivation of daily maps of ice drift in the Arctic HH polarization desired and sufficient Satellite SAR data enables ice drift determination all year round, other satellite ice drift products only available during Winter Sentinel-1A now provides daily ice drift data for a large part of the Arctic Around 70+ S1A scenes per day acquired over sea ice covered areas in Northern Hemisphere

12 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

13 NASA Operation IceBridge and RADARSAT-2 NASA's Operational IceBridge (OIB) conducts extensive airborne surveys of Earth's polar ice to bridge the gap between (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-1; ) and ICESat-2 (2017). Of primary interest to the sea ice community are the ice thickness and snow depth on sea ice NO SAR support

14 NASA Operation IceBridge and RADARSAT day coverage of OIB sea ice domain from RADARSAT scenes for 2014; 762 scenes for 2015 Used for field validation and preflight planning

15 NASA Operation IceBridge and RADARSAT-2 Co-ordinated with ground team. Another major campaign scheduled for March 2016

16 NASA Operation IceBridge and RADARSAT-2 Validating OIB snow on sea ice product King et al., in review

17 Science Highlights: Invisible Polynyas Jones Sound Feb 10, 2013 Melling et al JGR

18 Science Highlights: Invisible Polynyas Synergy needed to find these polynyas Melling et al JGR

19 Science Highlights: Ice Thickness in the Northwest Passage First ever airborne EM ice thickness survey of Northwest Passage Haas and Howell 2015-GRL

20 Satellite observations of ice drift vs Copernicus model forecasts Excellent coverage of European Arctic The capability of S1A(+B) provides the data background for development of next generation ice drift modules in Climate- and sea ice models. Efforts are underway in France, Belgium and Norway. Ice drift predicted by MyOcean (yellow), Ice drift observed by S1A (green), January

21 Ice drift vs Wind Two datasets of sea ice drift OSISAF AMSR-E ice drift MyOcean ENVISAT ASAR ice drift Analysis shows increase in ice drift to wind speed ratio over the last 10 years. Consistent with the ice having thinned substantially over the same period

22 Downstream Services See near real time updates of Sentinel-1, ASMR2, MODIS and Copernicus model data etc.

23 We already deliver Sentinel-1 SAR data directly to our users in Greenland and the images are very popular with the general public!! More than images per month downloaded by Greenland users

24 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

25 Polar Typical 1-day coverage September 2015 Sentinel-1A Northern Hemisphere Typical 3-day coverage September 2015

26 RADARSAT-2 and RCM Northern Hemisphere Daily coverage with RADARSAT-2 Daily coverage with RCM

27 Southern Hemisphere Typical 1-day coverage September 2015 Typical 3-day coverage September 2015

28 Southern Hemisphere In the Southern Hemisphere we need a combination of ascending and descending passes to get day to day overlap areas and be able to detect ice drift and deformation More than 2 satellites are needed to give Southern Hemisphere similar coverage to the North

29 We need automatic methods to process the 1000s of Sentinel-1 scenes into more user friendly products Today we derive ice information from SAR data by manual interpretation With the large number of SAR scenes we get from Sentinel-1 we need further automatic methods Not easy - SAR data are very noisy However, potential for much higher resolution products, and faster delivery

30 Automating SAR classification

31 Outline 1. Scientific requirements for studying floating ice 2. Sentinel-1A Progress Update 3. Science Highlights 4. Science Gaps 5. Future Planning

32 ICESat-2 Of wide interest to the science community Estimate sea ice thickness to examine ice/ocean/atmosphere exchanges of energy, mass and moisture Need RADARSAT-2, Sentinel-1A/1B and RCM (when launched) to ensure complete pan- Arctic coverage. Coordinate with Ron Kwok (Sea Ice Science Team lead)

33 ICESat-2 Retrieval of sea ice thickness Courtesy T. Markus

34 Thank You!

35 Seasonal Prediction Needs Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP)