Topic 2g Part 2: Snow On Sea Ice - Cal/Val in the Field
Topic 2g - Part 3: Snow on Sea Ice - Additional Cal/Val Activity
In this video, Dr Rosemary Willatt, looks at remote sensing of Sea Ice, with a focus on the radar interaction with snow cover on sea ice. She also explains how snow conditions can affect the echoes that are returned from radar signals.
On the ground, measurements are taken to help calibrate readings from satellites. These are referred to as 'in-situ' measurements.
When snow sits on the sea ice it pushes the ice down, submerging more of it in the ocean. This makes taking measurements of its thickness by using satellites more difficult.
By having an in-situ understanding of how deep the radar can penetrate snow on the sea ice, scientists can calibrate their data more accurately and can therefore get more accurate readings of sea ice thickness from satellites.
In-situ measurements are important to calibrate satellite data. Professor Julienne Stroeve and her team calibrate in-situ snow on ice measurements with satellite data onboard MOSAIC.
To further understanding of how in situ measurements work alongside satellite measurements, watch The Importance of Field Research and Data Validation as part of The Frozen Frontier: Monitoring the Greenland Ice Sheet From Space MOOC, which also available freely on the Imperative MOOCs website.
Featured Educators:
- Dr Rosemary Willatt
- Professor Julienne Stroeve
- Dr Vishnu Nandan
(Topic 2g Part 2 was partly filmed remotely during COVID-19 lockdown conditions)
Take the quiz
You can take the end of week quiz by clicking on the quiz tab located below the video.
Sea Ice
Course topics
The core videos of this course are labelled as topic videos.
We have also provided a range of optional further reading, links, and additional resources to help consolidate your learning. Here is a summary of what is available:
Topic links and resources
In each topic, once you have watched the video and read the accompanying text, you will find the following information:
- Optional Further Reading: These are external links to further reading.
- Featured Images and Animations: Below the text on each video page, you’ll find the featured images and featured animations.
- Interactives: On the 'Interactives' tab on relevent topic pages, you will find a satellite tracking application showing the current location of the satellites, a data viewer from the ESA WEkEO platform, as well as a data viewer, specially created for this course, allowing you to explore a selection of data relevant to the themes and topics in this course. (Please note that due to maintenance, the data viewer is currently unavailable).
Quizzes and comments
- Quizzes: At the end of each week there will be a quizz consisting of around five questions. These will help you consolidate your understanding of new topics, but are not scored. The feedback given with each answer also will also provide you with important information.
Weekly interactive exercises
At the end of each week, we have included a guided exercise, using interactive apps available on other websites, to help you become more familiar with looking at and working with EO datasets. You will be guided through the process of searching for, comparing and drawing conclusions from data relevant to some of the topics covered in that week.
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