Improved sea-ice monitoring for the Baltic Sea: Project overview and first results

In 2007 a field campaign was conducted in the Gulf of Bothnia. The aim was to collect validation data for an evaluation of the possibilities to use SAR data from the ALOS satellite for sea-ice monitoring. This paper gives an overview of the field campaign, collected data and the first results. A comparison between ScanSAR images from ALOS and Envisat indicate that the main ice features can be seen in both image types. An initial analysis also shows that the L-band backscatter from open water is less sensitive to wind in the cross-polarized than in the copolarized channels.