First results of the ARIEL L-band radiometer on the MOSAiC Arctic Expedition during the late summer and autumn period

17 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables.-- Data accessibility statement: All of the data used in this study are included in Tables 1 and 2 of this manuscript and are available from the PANGAEA webpage (Gabarró et al., 2022a; Gabarró et al., 2022b). The data are also available on the Barcelona Expert Center webpage (https://bec.icm.csic.es/)

Arctic sea ice is changing rapidly. Its retreat significantly impacts Arctic heat fluxes, ocean currents, and ecology, warranting the continuous monitoring and tracking of changes to sea ice extent and thickness. L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave radiometry can measure sea ice thickness for thin ice ≤1 m, depending on salinity and temperature. The sensitivity to thin ice makes L-band measurements complementary to radar altimetry which can measure the thickness of thick ice with reasonable accuracy. During the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition, we deployed the mobile ARIEL L-band radiometer on the sea ice floe next to research vessel Polarstern to study the sensitivity of the L-band to different sea ice parameters (e.g., snow and ice thickness, ice salinity, ice and snow temperature), with the aim to help improve/validate current microwave emission models. Our results show that ARIEL is sensitive to different types of surfaces (ice, leads, and melt ponds) and to ice thickness up to 70 cm when the salinity of the sea ice is low. The measurements can be reproduced with the Burke emission model when in situ snow and ice measurements for the autumn transects were used as model input. The correlation coefficient for modeled Burke brightness temperature (BT) versus ARIEL measurements was approximately 0.8. The discrepancy between the measurements and the model is about 5%, depending on the transects analyzed. No explicit dependence on snow depth was detected. We present a qualitative analysis for thin ice observations on leads. We have demonstrated that the ARIEL radiometer is an excellent field instrument for quantifying the sensitivity of L-band radiometry to ice and snow parameters, leading to insights that can enhance sea ice thickness retrievals from L-band radiometer satellites (such as Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)) and improve estimates of Arctic sea-ice thickness changes on a larger scale

This study and resulting paper have been done thanks to the Spanish funding Agency (AEI), who funded the Programación Conjunta Internacional project called “MEJORANDO LOS MODELOS DE EMISIVIDAD DEL HIELO MARINO EN LAS MICROONDAS DE BAJA FRECUENCIA” (ICE-MOD), with reference PCI2019-111844-2. GS and MH is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the framework of the MOSAiCmicrowaveRS project (grant 420499875). GS and CG acknowledge support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 101003826 via project CRiceS (Climate Relevant interactions and feedbacks: the key role of sea ice and snow in the polar and global climate system)

This work acknowledges the “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence” accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)

Peer reviewed