Evaluation of Sea Ice Drift in the Arctic Marginal Ice Zone based on Sentinel-1A/B Satellite Radar Measurements

E. V. Plotnikov1, ✉, I. E. Kozlov1, E. V. Zhuk1, A. V. Marchenko2

1 Marine Hydrophysical Institute of RAS, Sevastopol, Russian Federation

2 University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway

✉ e-mail: ev.plotnikov@ya.ru

Abstract

Purpose. The object of the work is to construct an automated system for calculating sea ice drift velocity fields using Sentinel-1A/B radar measurements based on the normalized maximum cross-correlation approach. The conditions and results of a numerical experiment aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of this technique for 63 pairs of radar images of the Fram Strait region for the summer-autumn periods in 2017 and 2018 are presented. Both the calculation algorithm and the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the results are described in details. The effectiveness of the approach being applied to regular monitoring of ice drift is considered.

Methods and Results. The maximum cross-correlation (MCC) approach was used for calculations. It is based on automated finding of photographically similar fragments in the pairs of images with a known sensing time interval. The Pearson correlation coefficient was applied as a proximity metric. As a result, 63 sea ice drift velocity fields were constructed in the Fram Strait region, each with a spatial scale of approximately several hundred thousand square kilometers. The method for filtering false correlations is proposed.

Conclusions. The approach applied in the study makes it possible to obtain automatically the sea ice drift velocity fields from the satellite data with high spatial resolution (40 m). The reconstructed velocity fields cover significant areas of the ocean surface. The method proposed for filtering false correlations permits to extract effectively the fragments with distortions resulting from the MCС algorithm limitations, from the calculation results.

Keywords

sea ice drift dynamics, sea ice, optical flow, maximum cross-correlation approach, Sentinel-1A/B images, Fram Strait, Arctic Ocean

Acknowledgements

The study was carried out with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 21–17–00278 (analysis, validation and development of a web-service to store sea ice drift fields) and within the framework of the theme of state assignment № FNNN-2024-0017 (development of the method for calculating sea ice drift velocity based on satellite radar data).

Original russian text

Original Russian Text © The Authors, 2024, published in MORSKOY GIDROFIZICHESKIY ZHURNAL, Vol. 40, Iss. 2, pp. 312–324 (2024)

For citation

Plotnikov, E.V., Kozlov, I.E., Zhuk, E.V. and Marchenko, A.V., 2024. Evaluation of Sea Ice Drift in the Arctic Marginal Ice Zone Based on Sentinel-1A/B Satellite Radar Measurements. Physical Oceanography, 31(2), pp. 284-294.

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