Monthly Arctic sea ice lead fraction in 0.5° x 0.5° resolution from SARAL/Altika altimeter, link to datasets in NetCDF 4 format

Sea ice leads play an essential role in ocean-ice-atmosphere exchange, in ocean circulation, geochemistry, and in ice dynamics. Their precise detection is crucial for altimetric estimations of sea ice thickness and volume. This study evaluates the performance of the SARAL/AltiKa (Satellite with ARgos and ALtiKa) altimeter to detect leads and to monitor their spatio-temporal dynamics. We show that a pulse peakiness parameter (PP) used to detect leads by Envisat RA-2 and ERS-1,-2 altimeters is not suitable because of saturation of AltiKa return echoes over the leads. The signal saturation results in loss of 6–10% of PP data over sea ice. We propose a different parameter—maximal power of waveform—and define the threshold to discriminate the leads. Our algorithm can be applied from December until May. It detects well the leads of small and medium size from 200 m to 3–4 km. So the combination of the high-resolution altimetric estimates with low-resolution thermal infra-red or radiometric lead fraction products could enhance the capability of remote sensing to monitor sea ice fracturing.

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Cite this as

Zakharova, Elena A, Fleury, Sara, Guerreiro, Kévin, Willmes, Sascha, Rémy, Frédérique, Kouraev, Alexei V, Heinemann, Günther (2016). Dataset: Monthly Arctic sea ice lead fraction in 0.5° x 0.5° resolution from SARAL/Altika altimeter, link to datasets in NetCDF 4 format. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.862882

DOI retrieved: 2016

Additional Info

Field Value
Imported on November 29, 2024
Last update November 29, 2024
License CC-BY-NC-3.0
Source https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.862882
Author Zakharova, Elena A
Given Name Elena A
Family Name Zakharova
More Authors
Fleury, Sara
Guerreiro, Kévin
Willmes, Sascha
Rémy, Frédérique
Kouraev, Alexei V
Heinemann, Günther
Source Creation 2016
Publication Year 2016
Subject Areas
Name: Geophysics

Name: LandSurface

Name: Oceans

Related Identifiers
Title: Sea ice leads detection using SARAL/AltiKa altimeter
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/01490419.2015.1019655
Type: DOI
Relation: IsSupplementTo
Year: 2015
Source: Marine Geodesy
Authors: Zakharova Elena A , Fleury Sara , Guerreiro Kévin , Willmes Sascha , Rémy Frédérique , Kouraev Alexei V , Heinemann Günther .