The Ku-band (14.6 GHz) Seasat scatterometer (SASS), which flew for 3 months in 1978, was designed to measure the normalized radar backscatter coefficient ((sigma) ⁰) in order to determine the near-surface wind over the ocean. While SASS made measurements of (sigma) ⁰ over land and ice regions, the application of this data has been limited due to the low resolution (50 km) of the measurements. Recently, however, we developed a new technique to generate enhanced resolution (to as fine as 3 - 4 km) images of the surface radar backscatter characteristics from SASS measurements. In this paper we report some results of a study of the seasonal response of the Greenland ice sheet using this technique. Using SASS data, we have generated a time-series of enhanced resolution images of vertically-polarized radar images of Greenland during July - Sept. 1978. The effects of the summer melt along the ice sheet periphery are clearly evident in the time series. In central Greenland, which exhibits a very high radar backscatter at 14.6 GHz, very little change was observed over the three month data set.

Date Published: 31 August 1993
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 1941, Ground Sensing, (31 August 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.154695

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1941:
Ground Sensing
Hatem N. Nasr, Editor(s)