SMOS in Antarctica for the Snowmelt Monitoring

In Antarctica, the coastal and ice-shelves areas are affected by snowmelt during the austral summer. The length and extend of this melting period are key parameters in the study of climate and its interannual variations in these regions. Melting events have a significant impact on the microwave emissivity of the surface. Thus, satellite microwave observations can be used in order to provide useful information over the whole Antarctic coast and ice-shelves. Several studies exploited the 19 and 37 GHz long time series to retrieve snowmelt events. In this study, these algorithms previously developed have been used to detect melt from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite observations at 1.4 GHz. Snowmelt dataset was obtained from April 2010 and March 2017 with SMOS observations. Finally, the potential of combined low and high frequencies to provide a synergetic description of surface melting events in Antarctica have been highlighted.