CIRFA seminar (16 March) – Arctic Sea Ice Thickness and Snow Depth

Shiming Xu from Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, China is visiting CIRFA and will present a seminar with the title: ‘Satellite Retrieval of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness and Snow Depth through Synergy of Active-Passive Payloads – Progress and Outlook’ for us.

Here the abstract:

Sea ice and its snow cover is an integral component of the polar and global climate system. The sea ice thickness and volume is indicative of the polar ocean heat loss, while the snow cover is the direct manifestation of the atmospheric hydrological cycle. Furthermore, the snow cover greatly modulates the air-ice-ocean interactions through thermal insulation and albedo feedback. Under global warming and Arctic amplification, the Arctic sea ice and its snow cover has undergone drastic changes, with the projected transition to seasonal ice coverage and associated regime shift in the coming decades. On the other hand, satellite altimetry is the major approach to attain large-scale sea ice thickness, and the snow cover is a major source of uncertainty for the thickness retrieval. In this talk I will introduce the physical synergy of satellite altimetry and passive radiometry for the simultaneous retrieval of both sea ice thickness (SIT) and snow depth (SD). Climate record of winter SIT and SD is constructed with CryoSat-2 and SMOS for Arctic winters. In particular, the analysis and discussion of the radar signal penetration in the snow cover is carried out for key regions including the Atlantic Arctic. Inter-comparison with existing SIT and SD products are presented. Furthermore, I present initial results of the snow-ice interaction study for Arctic winters with the new SIT & SD product. Related topics, including the representation of altimetric scans of the sea ice cover and future plan for the INTERAAC project, are also discussed.

The seminar will take place Thursday 16 March at 14:00 at CIRFA and online. If you would like to join the seminar mailing list, please contact Polona.