Building Seasonal Maps of Antarctica’s Temperature with Repeat-Pass Microwave Interferometry

We discuss an approach to measuring high-resolution maps of Antarctic ice sheet temperatures using repeat-pass sparsely sampled microwave interferometry. This approach follows from the inference that the relative invariance of ice sheet temperatures on annual timescales obviates the need for high snapshot sensitivity imposed as a requirement for observing more variable regions of the Earth system with interferometers such as SMOS. Such measurements could hypothetically be conducted with spatial resolutions less than 10 km using a small constellation of satellites. We discuss specifically how modifications to sheet-base geothermal heat flux could manifest as observable thermal signatures and a strategy to form images from a mosaic of multiple heterogeneous sparsely sampled observations, and we conclude with comments on necessary areas for future investigations.