Publication
Reference
Andrieu François, Schmidt Frédéric, Schmitt Bernard, Douté Sylvain, Brissaud Olivier (2016). Retrieving the characteristics of slab ice covering snow by remote sensing. Cryosphere, 10, 2113 - 2128.
Names
  • François Andrieu
  • Frédéric Schmidt
  • Bernard Schmitt
  • Sylvain Douté
  • Olivier Brissaud
Article and keywords
Title
Retrieving the characteristics of slab ice covering snow by remote sensing
Abstract
We present an effort to validate a previously developed radiative transfer model, and an innovative Bayesian inversion method designed to retrieve the properties of slab-ice-covered surfaces. This retrieval method is adapted to satellite data, and is able to provide uncertainties on the results of the inversions. We focused on surfaces composed of a pure slab of water ice covering an optically thick layer of snow in this study. We sought to retrieve the roughness of the ice–air interface, the thickness of the slab layer and the mean grain diameter of the underlying snow. Numerical validations have been conducted on the method, and showed that if the thickness of the slab layer is above 5 mm and the noise on the signal is above 3 %, then it is not possible to invert the grain diameter of the snow. In contrast, the roughness and the thickness of the slab can be determined, even with high levels of noise up to 20 %. Experimental validations have been conducted on spectra collected from laboratory samples of water ice on snow using a spectro-radiogoniometer. The results are in agreement with the numerical validations, and show that a grain diameter can be correctly retrieved for low slab thicknesses, but not for bigger ones, and that the roughness and thickness are correctly inverted in every case.
Keywords
spectroscopy, optics, numerical model, spectro-gonio radiometer, radiative transfer simulation, bidirectional reflection, bidirectional reflectance spectra, specular reflectance spectra, BRDF, spectra inversion, visible, near-IR, ice, snow, grain size, surface roughness, layer thickness, H2O, surface, Earth
Content
sample, spectral data, BRDF data, earth sciences
Year
2016
Journal
The Cryosphere
Volume
10
Pages
2113 - 2128
Pages number
16
Document type
article
Publication state
published
Doi
10.5194/tc-10-2113-2016
Identifiers
Publications