A New Algorithm for Daily Sea Ice Lead Identification in the Arctic and Antarctic Winter from Thermal-Infrared Satellite Imagery
Department of Environmental Meteorology, University of Trier, 54296 Trier, Germany
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Remote Sens. 2020, 12(12), 1957; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12121957
Received: 26 March 2020
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Revised: 4 June 2020
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Accepted: 13 June 2020
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Published: 17 June 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polar Sea Ice: Detection, Monitoring and Modeling)
The presence of sea ice leads in the sea ice cover represents a key feature in polar regions by controlling the heat exchange between the relatively warm ocean and cold atmosphere due to increased fluxes of turbulent sensible and latent heat. Sea ice leads contribute to the sea ice production and are sources for the formation of dense water which affects the ocean circulation. Atmospheric and ocean models strongly rely on observational data to describe the respective state of the sea ice since numerical models are not able to produce sea ice leads explicitly. For the Arctic, some lead datasets are available, but for the Antarctic, no such data yet exist. Our study presents a new algorithm with which leads are automatically identified in satellite thermal infrared images. A variety of lead metrics is used to distinguish between true leads and detection artefacts with the use of fuzzy logic. We evaluate the outputs and provide pixel-wise uncertainties. Our data yield daily sea ice lead maps at a resolution of 1 km2 for the winter months November– April 2002/03–2018/19 (Arctic) and April–September 2003–2019 (Antarctic), respectively. The long-term average of the lead frequency distributions show distinct features related to bathymetric structures in both hemispheres.
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Keywords:
sea ice; leads; MODIS; Arctic; Antarctic; polar regions; image processing; fuzzy logic, thermal infrared remote sensing
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Reiser, F.; Willmes, S.; Heinemann, G. A New Algorithm for Daily Sea Ice Lead Identification in the Arctic and Antarctic Winter from Thermal-Infrared Satellite Imagery. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 1957. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12121957
AMA Style
Reiser F, Willmes S, Heinemann G. A New Algorithm for Daily Sea Ice Lead Identification in the Arctic and Antarctic Winter from Thermal-Infrared Satellite Imagery. Remote Sensing. 2020; 12(12):1957. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12121957
Chicago/Turabian StyleReiser, Fabian, Sascha Willmes, and Günther Heinemann. 2020. "A New Algorithm for Daily Sea Ice Lead Identification in the Arctic and Antarctic Winter from Thermal-Infrared Satellite Imagery" Remote Sensing 12, no. 12: 1957. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12121957
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