Enhanced Sea ICE Monitoring At L- and C-Bands using Rose-L and Sentinel-1

This brief note introduces a study that aims at quantifying the gain for sea ice observations which is achieved when combining L- and C-band SAR imagery for the retrieval of ice conditions and iceberg occurrences. An L-band SAR mission is currently under discussion at the European Space Agency (ESA) as one of the six Copernicus High Priority Candidate Missions (HPCMs). Since the emphasis of the study is on operational monitoring and ice charting, it involves contributions from different ice services that are members of the International Ice Charting Group (IICWG). Preliminary results confirm findings of earlier investigations on the use of L-band for sea ice monitoring and extend them with first systematic investigations of iceberg detection at L-band.