Modeling Sea Ice Surface Emissivity at Microwave Frequencies: Impact of the Surface Assumptions and Potential Use for Sea Ice Extent and Type Classification

In this paper, the surface emissivity is retrieved over the Arctic sea ice/open seas using observations from the advanced microwave sounding unit window channels during the year 2009. The emissivity computation is performed using two contrasted surface assumptions: specular and Lambertian assumptions. The obtained sea ice surface emissivities are studied in this paper with a focus on the effect of the surface assumption. Some factors of variability of the obtained emissivities are analyzed: variability in space, in time, with the zenith angle, and with respect to the frequency. We show that the near-nadir surface emissivity and emissivity difference (obtained using two contrasted surface assumptions) could be used as an excellent proxy to detect ice/no ice regions. We also show that near-nadir sea ice emissivity at some selected frequencies and the combination of both high and low window frequencies could also be very useful to better characterize sea ice surface physical properties and provide additional information for existing sea ice classifications, as they bring relevant information about first year and multiyear sea ice properties and their seasonal evolution.