Modeling Microwave Emission and Scattering from Snow-Covered Sea Ice

Two of the most successful applications of sea ice from satellite remote sensing data are the sea ice concentration derived from microwave radiometers and the sea ice thickness derived from radar altimeters using empirical relations. Forward models are defined as models that simulate the observed sea ice backscatter or brightness temperature at the top of the atmosphere as functions of physical input parameters, such as temperature, surface roughness, snow and ice density, salinity, emissivity, dielectric constant microstructure, and thickness. They have been developed to support retrieval of ice and snow parameters and characterize the uncertainties in the operational retrievals. Implementation and application of such models is described in this chapter. Simple first-order radar scattering models can answer some interesting questions which can help improve sea ice thickness mapping applications using radar altimeters. A radar altimeter scattering model is applied to FYI covered by saline snow.