Towards a swath-to-swath sea-ice drift product for the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer mission

Across spatial and temporal scales, sea-ice motion has implications for ship navigation, the sea-ice thickness distribution, sea-ice export to lower latitudes and re-circulation in the polar seas, among others. Satellite remote sensing is an effective way to monitor sea-ice drift globally and daily, especially using the wide swaths of passive microwave missions. Since the late 1990s, many algorithms and products have been developed for this task. Here, we investigate how processing sea-ice drift vectors from the intersection of individual swaths of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) mission compares to today's status quo (processing from daily averaged maps of brightness temperature). We document that the swath-to-swath (S2S) approach results in many more (2 orders of magnitude) sea-ice drift vectors than the daily map (DM) approach. These S2S vectors also validate better when compared to trajectories of on-ice drifters. For example, the RMSE of the 24 h winter Arctic sea-ice drift is 0.9 km for S2S vectors and 1.3 km for DM vectors from the 36.5 GHz imagery of AMSR2. Through a series of experiments with actual AMSR2 data and simulated Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR) data, we study the impact that geolocation uncertainty and imaging resolution have on the accuracy of the sea-ice drift vectors. We conclude by recommending that a swath-to-swath approach is adopted for the future operational Level-2 sea-ice drift product of the CIMR mission. We outline some potential next steps towards further improving the algorithms and making the user community ready to fully take advantage of such a product.

Automated summary

Sea-ice motion impacts ship navigation, sea-ice thickness distribution, sea-ice export to lower latitudes, and re-circulation in polar seas. Satellite remote sensing is an effective way to monitor global sea-ice drift, with the swath-to-swath approach showing improved accuracy compared to the daily map method. This study evaluates the impact of geolocation uncertainty and imaging resolution on the accuracy of sea-ice drift vectors and suggests adopting the swath-to-swath approach for future sea-ice drift products.