We hope sea ice and related folks are planning to spend a lovely summer week in Winnipeg, Canada, 18-23 August 2019 for the IGS Sea Ice Symposium on Sea Ice at the Interface.
If you are, please consider submitting an abstract to our session on "Satellite microwave remote sensing for sea ice research". Abstracts are due on the equinox, 20 March 2019. So get your abstract in and enjoy your 12 hours of daylight - no matter where you are on earth!
Submit your abstract by 20 March here: https://www.igsoc.org/symposia/2019/winnipeg/
Further details of the session are below. Feel free to contact me or my co-chairs if you have any questions.
Regards,
Gunnar Spreen, University of Bremen, Germany
Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Colorado, USA, walt@nsidc.org
Rob Massom, Australian Antarctic Division, Australia
Satellite microwave remote sensing for sea ice research
With their daylight- and weather-independent observations, satellite microwave sensors are the backbone for monitoring sea ice in polar regions. Observations from passive microwave radiometers reach back to the 1970s and constitute one of today's most important climate change records, e.g., documenting the drastic Arctic sea ice reduction. They are used as input to numerical weather and climate models, by ice services, and by local communities for ice edge information. Current scatterometer and radiometer (e.g., ASCAT, AMSR2, SSMIS, MWRI, SMOS and SMAP) and future missions (e.g., Copernicus CIMR) allow retrieval of essential sea-ice quantities (e.g., concentration, thin ice thickness, drift, ice type) at high temporal resolution, accuracy and consistency over time. On regional scales, SAR sensors provide observations with high spatial resolution (1–100 m) and at multiple polarizations, which allow ice type identification and high-resolution ice dynamics. The number of SAR satellites in orbit is increasing (Sentinel-1, COSMO-SkyMed, RCM). Thus, larger areas of the polar regions are covered daily and observed at different frequencies (e.g., TerraSAR-X, ALOS2). Retrieval methods need to be evaluated by extensive cal/val activities. We invite presentations about all aspects of satellite microwave remote sensing in both hemispheres, from long time series analyses to operational applications.
