What was the purpose of IceSAR 2019?

The IceSAR 2019 study was motivated by the need to improve the understanding of radar backscatter of sea ice at different wavelengths and polarisations. These measurements were added to the funded DLR PermASAR campaign at the end of the 2019 winter campaign. It acquired fully polarimetric SAR data at X-, C- and L-band along a 200 km transect from west to east and back of Greenland. A second antenna was used to provide full-baseline along-track interferometric (ATI) measurements in all X-band polarisations.

What was the outcome of IceSAR 2019?

The PolSAR data processing was carried out in segments (20 segments of 10 km length with overlap) and focused SAR imagery was geocoded onto a UTM grid. ATI phase and radial ground velocity components of ice drift were evaluated and geocoded. The measurements show ice speeds that vary from zero (land fast ice) to up to 2 m/s.

The data were analysed with respect to two separate areas of investigation. The first concerned ice drift and covered the following topics:

• Range component of ice drift from ATI phase
• 2D ice drift from outward and inward flown passes
• Azimuth component from single-pass dual squint analysis.

The consistency of the different measurement principles was demonstrated through scatter-plots (2D histograms) and regression coefficients. The investigation also includes the extrapolation of the results to the lower resolution space-borne case.

The second area of investigation was related to analysing the potential for sea ice clustering & classification on the basis of polarimetric SAR data. It covered the following topics and findings:

• State-of-the-art K-means clustering based on a polarimetric distance measure
• A very high similarity of the derived clusters in all frequency bands was noted
• Results are largely consistent for different look directions and across a wide range of incidence angles
• The clustering results have been used to classify ice bergs. The classification was validated with optical camera pictures taken by the operator during the flight.

The processed radar data segments in slant-range geometry, as well as the geocoded imagery, are part of the delivery. The F-SAR data format description can be found online.

In addition, the delivery includes videos of polarimetric pseudo-colour images of both stripes and optical camera pictures.

Download the IceSAR 2019 Final Report

Digital Object Identifier: European Space Agency, 2024, IceSAR-2019 campaign, https://doi.org/10.57780/esa-a787b48

The campaign data is available online via FTPS upon submission of a data access request. An active EO Sign In account is required to submit the request.

The data can be downloaded via an FTP client (e.g., FileZilla or WinSCP) using the option "Implicit FTP over TLS".

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