A study on improving sea ice monitoring with SAR data at Lake Saroma

The main objective of this research is to investigate the possible use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to monitor sea ice in the southern region of the Sea of Okhotsk. There are a lot of SAR satellites operating in orbit, and most satellites can observe the ground targets with various observation parameters. We would like to find out the suitable observation parameters for monitoring sea ice in relatively thin sea ice area. In-situ data collections on Lake Saroma were carried out in mid February 2012, which were simultaneously with ENVISAT/ASAR and RADARSAT-2 observations. We found that RADARSAT-2 VV to HH co-pol. backscattering ratio decreases as the ice thickness, which was found in our previous work. We will use the measured dielectric constant of the ice surface for improving the backscattering coefficient model for thin sea ice.