Remote Sensing of Sea Ice and Icebergs

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change and changing local ice conditions have increased the need for reliable, accurate, and timely ice information as well as the need for time series (history) of the ice conditions. The time series information is useful and necessary, e.g., for designing and building coastal and off-shore constructions and ships for ice conditions. Longer-term ice information can also be used in the optimization and planning of ship routing and ice breaking operations. Accurate ice data can also be used in assimilation for the models forecasting weather and ice conditions, both of which are extremely necessary for all off-shore and coastal activities in ice-infected areas.

Today, a wide range of earth observation (EO) instruments capable of measuring different parameters (e.g., sea ice concentration, sea ice type, sea ice thickness, sea ice drift, and icebergs) related to sea ice in all weather and lighting conditions exist. Examples of instruments well suited to sea ice monitoring are, e.g., SAR, microwave radiometers, and altimeters. Every day, a huge amount of data is measured, and the full potential of these data is not being exploited. There is continuous need for temporal and spatial high-resolution accurate sea ice information in many sectors. To meet these needs, new algorithms and methods efficiently utilizing the available and coming EO data are required. Data fusion from multiple EO instruments and methods related to ice dynamics and multi-temporal analysis are currently being explored. Additionally, distinguishing between snow cover on sea ice and sea ice to yield more accurate sea ice thickness estimates is an important topic requiring a fresh perspective.

We would like to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Remote Sensing by submitting original manuscripts, experimental work, and/or reviews in the field of remote sensing of sea ice (the estimation of sea ice parameters based on EO data and sea ice classification) and the detection and classification icebergs. The main goal of this Special Issue is to increase the level of knowledge on these topics, and thus enable more accurate and reliable automated (operational) sea ice observations based on EO data. Especially, such topics as data fusion in sea ice remote sensing; ice dynamics and the derivation of ice parameters (such as ice deformation, openings of ice) from ice dynamics; more reliable detection and classification of icebergs, especially within sea ice; and the estimation of snow cover on sea ice are of special interest to improve current sea ice observation systems.

Dr. Juha Karvonen
Dr. Anton Korosov

Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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