NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19940012966: Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice, 1978-1987: Satellite Passive-Microwave Observations and Analysis

319 Pages·82.8 MB·English

by  NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

NASASP-511
Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice, 1978 - 1987
Satellite Passive-Microwave Observations and Analysis
1979
September February
'
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, 1978-1987
SATELLITE PASSIVE-MICROWAVE OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS
(NASA-SP-511) ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC N94-17439
SEA ICE 1978-1987: SATELLITE
t
PASSIVE-MICROWAVE OBSERVATIONS AND
ANALYSIS (NASA) 306 p Unclas
HI/48 0191484
NASA SP-511
ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, 1978-1987
SATELLITE PASSIVE-MICROWAVE OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS
Per Gloersen
Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
William J. Campbell
United States Geological Survey
Ice and Climate Project
University ofPuget Sound
Tacoma, Washington 98416
Donald J. Cavalieri, Josefino C. Comiso,
Claire L. Parkinson, H. Jay Zwally
Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
Scientific and Technical Information Program
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, D.C. 1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, 1978-1987 : satellite passive-microwave
observations and analysis / Per Gloersen, William J. Campbell;
[with] Donald J. Cavalleri ... [et al.].
p. cm.-(NASA SP; no. 511)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sea ice—Polar regions—Remote sensing. 2. Microwave remote sensing.
I. Gloersen, Per. H. Campbell, William Joseph, 1930-. ffl. Series.
GB2595.A72 1993
551.3'43'0911-dc20 93-22329
CIP
IN MEMORIAM
William J. Campbell 1930-1992
We grieve the sudden and untimely loss of our beloved friend and colleague, Bill Campbell (1930-1992).
We shall always remember Bill as one of the warmest human beings, as well as one of the most enthusiastic
scientists we have ever encountered. Bill constantly reminded us that "we are human beings first and scientists
second." Friendship was always a primary consideration in Bill's interactions with colleagues. Bill Campbell
was a forceful advocate of polar region research. He pioneered microwave remote sensing of sea ice from
aircraft, and contributed greatly to the evolution of satellite microwave remote sensing. Bill's many
contributions, both written and unwritten, are reflected throughout this book. Bill will be sorely missed.
FOREWORD
T
his volume is the third in a series of NASA publications on the by the design requirement of fixed receiving horns coupled with an oscillat-
results of passive-microwave observations of sea ice in the polar ing parabolic dish antenna. However, an unanticipated additional complica-
regions, made from polar orbiting satellites. The casual reader tion in polarization mixing occurred as a result of leakage (cross-talk) in some
will open this volume and be impressed by the magnificent of the microwave wave guide switches. Therefore, during the first several
multicolored maps of the Arctic and Antarctic, showing the changes in years of data acquisition, the data contained serious calibration errors. The
distributions of sea ice with season and from year to year. Those who have SMMR Team overcame these problems through an intense analysis of the
been waiting for a comprehensive analysis of what has been happening in the Nimbus 7 data and experiments with the SMMR engineering model over a
polar regions in the past decade or so will surely hail the publication of this lake at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Persistence and
volume as a major event. ingenuity paid off handsomely, and the SMMR stayed on the air longer than
The history of these satellite observation is detailed in the text, but let any other microwave instrument ever launched on a satellite.
me remind the readers of this volume that the first passive-microwave maps What an extraordinary step forward this observational technique repre-
for sea ice were drawn as a result of flights over the Arctic Ocean in a NASA sents from the days of the early explorers and mariners who braved the oceans
Convair-990 aircraft during the period of 1967-1972, under the direction of of the Arctic and Antarctic, or who drifted on ice stations for months and
the late Dr. William Nordberg. It is to William Nordberg that this volume years! (Some of the routes of those early explorers are recorded in Figure
is dedicated. Deeply involved in these pioneering flights were two of the 3.2.2.) Their accounts tell the world about the mysterious realm of ice and
present authors—Drs. William Campbell and Per Gloersen—and Dr. Tho- snow, but their observations were limited by their close horizons. Modem
mas Wilheit. These flights proved convincingly that it was indeed possible technology permitted SMMR to map both polar regions from space every 2
to monitor remotely sea ice distribution in the dark of the polar night and days in greater detail than ever before. Readers of this volume should keep
through clouds. The instrument used in the aircraft, the Electrically Scanning that awesome sense of historical perspective in mind. It seems quite fair to
Microwave Radiometer (ESMR), served as the model for a scaled-up and refer to these new results as technological "breakthroughs."
redesigned version for space flight, manufactured by the Aerojet Corpora- A good part of the breakthroughs must be credited to the development
tion and flown on Nimbus 5 during the period 1973 to 1976. The ESMR of instruments capable of mapping the extraordinarily weak signals emitted
observations have been summarized in the publications by Zwally et al. by the Earth and its atmosphere in the microwave part of the spectrum, a feat
(1983a) for the Antarctic, and by Campbell et al. (1984) and Parkinson et al. deemed impossible in the early days of satellites. The SMMR instrument
(1987) for the Arctic. system did not spring full-blown overnight, of course, but it was the
Encouraged by the success of ESMR, NASA scientists and engineers culmination of several years of development efforts at the Massachusetts
developed a greatly improved instrument system—the Scanning Multichan- Institute of Technology, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion
nel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR)—flown on Nimbus 7 and Seasat A. Laboratory (JPL, where SMMR was built), and a number of other
The observations from the Nimbus 7 SMMR from November 1978 to August institutions.
1987 (8.8 years) are the subject of this treatise. Much as we must admire the magnificent gold-plated hardware that flew
SMMR received microwave radiation at five different wavelengths, on Nimbus 7, an even larger and equally crucial effort has been devoted to
from 0.8 to 4.5 cm (37 to 6.6 GHz), and detected separately both vertically the analysis of the SMMR observations and the development of computer
and horizontally polarized radiation at each wavelength. This additional algorithms on which to base the interpretations given in this volume. The list
information allowed the analysis to go far beyond that possible with ESMR, of references will give some idea of the large team of scientists and
and to distinguish between, for example, first-year and multiyear sea ice. programmers, both at the GSFC and elsewhere, who spent years working on
There were some problems with the SMMR. While ESMR had an the microwave observations in order to understand what they really mean.
electrically scanning antenna (a phased array) that did not have to move, Note also the attention paid to an analysis of both instrument and algorithm
SMMR had a mechanically scanning antenna that promised to have better errors given in this treatise. We must not forget that the dedicated and unsung
performance. There was a known problem of polarization mixing, caused servants of the space flight program are largely responsible for its success.
VII
FOREWORD
There is a saying in the space science community about "a solution North Atlantic and (to a lesser degree) the North Pacific became significantly
looking for a problem"—a marvel of technology making observations that cooler in winter. In short, the model world seemed to behave more or less
nobody really cares about. Nothing could be farther from the mark in the case the same way as the real one, albeit in a complex and unexpected way.
of SMMR. Its observations of the seasonal growth and decay of sea ice Apparently the regional changes, partly driven by changes in circulation in
through the years are of immense importance as we try to detect global both atmosphere and oceans, did not keep in step everywhere with the global
change and the greenhouse effect on the Earth, a warming trend that now changes. Similar results obtained in a dynamic experiment with the
seems likely as the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, chlo- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) climate model, with a
rofluorocarbons (CFCs), and other greenhouse gases continue to increase, circulating ocean, show that the response to a progressive climate change is
and as the circulation patterns in both atmosphere and oceans are gradually complex and different between the two hemispheres (Stouffer et al., 1989).
modified. The nearly 9-year lifetime of SMMR is too short to demonstrate With those lessons in mind, let us look again at the SMMR results. To
conclusively a long-term trend by itself, but it provides an invaluable be sure, there were only small changes in the overall Arctic sea ice extent and
baseline for climate-related studies. the open water within the pack during the 9-year period, but consider the
What have the ESMR and SMMR observations shown us so far? changes in the various regions around the Arctic. Stronger decreasing trends
Scientists are still sifting through the evidence. During the ESMR period of occurred in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Greenland Sea, and the Kara and Barents
observation, there was a suggestion that the extent of polar sea ice was Seas, but the sea ice extent increased in the Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, and
decreasing slightly, as might be expected, as the Earth was growing warmer. Baffin Bay and Davis Strait.
During the SMMR period, the Arctic sea ice extent has a statistically The important point is that we now have an opportunity to study these
significant negative trend of 2.1 ±0.9%, and open water within the ice pack SMMR results in the light of global surface observations and our improved
boundaries has a negative trend of 3.5±2.0%. During the same period, the climate modeling capability. This combined theoretical and observational
Antarctic sea ice pack shows no significant trends in these two parameters. approach to the analysis of a most complex situation is science at its best. We
These trends are consistent with the observation that the global average should not expect a simple picture to emerge, but one that portrays nature in
surface temperature has been rising rapidly in the past 20 years, and that all her enigmatic splendor.
stratospheric temperatures have been falling, both trends predicted by the The authors of this volume appreciated this important point. The Arctic
greenhouse theory. Ocean data attracted their attention especially. Section 3.2 covers much more
We are increasingly aware of the fact that our climate system is much than the maps of sea ice distribution; it includes an analysis of the variations
too complex to respond in a simple way to greenhouse warming. The both in sea ice concentration and in multiyear ice distribution in the ice pack
regional changes are often just as dramatic and fascinating as the overall for selected periods, comparing the ice drift with the surface pressure and
average global change. In the past several decades, the North Atlantic and wind distributions (as given by the buoys from the Arctic Ocean Buoy
the North Pacific have actually been getting somewhat colder in winter, Program). One significant finding was that areas of persistent reduced ice
while the land masses have generally become significantly warmer. Does concentration, or polynyas, were not simply a result of wind-induced ice
this mean that the greenhouse theory and the climate models based on it are divergence, but also a result of oceanographic forcing such as upwelling—
wrong? Of course not, but the early models have tended to give us an a fact already suspected but previously difficult to observe.
oversimplified view of what to expect. Appendix A provides a surface-based record of Arctic buoy observa-
Consider two recent climate model experiments that went a couple of tions of pressure, temperature, and position (provided by Roger Colony of
steps farther than previous model experiments to try to capture another level the University of Washington Polar Science Center), and ice temperatures
of complexity in the climate system. In one of these model experiments, the (derived from SMMR data, averaged for each month of the SMMR period)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate for the purpose of aiding the subsequent analysis of the SMMR data. I
Model was run with a steadily increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, wonder how many Ph.D. theses will be based on the information contained
which is a realistic assumption. (The carbon dioxide will not increase in this one volume.
instantaneously, as assumed in most previous model experiments.) Further- The satellite data that will be obtained in the future may not be made
more, in this climate model, the general circulation model (GCM) atmos- available as completely and elegantly as in this volume for SMMR, but
phere was coupled to a five-layer ocean circulation model that transported nevertheless the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
heat horizontally and displayed vertical mixing (Washington and Meehl, World Data Center/National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo-
1989). All this required an enormous amount of computer time, but the rado, has computer-based files of both Nimbus 7 SMMR and the first years
model experiment had to be tried. of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor
In the second decade of the experiment (in model time) a curious Microwave/Imager (SSMI—an instrument similar to SMMR) brightness
phenomenon took place: while the land areas continued to grow warmer, the temperatures on polar stereographic grid maps for both regions. Computer
VIII
programs are provided for extracting the grid files from the data stored on sets
of CD ROMs.
This scientific quest will continue to unfold in the years to come and will
build on the exemplary record of SMMR as observations from the SSMI and
future global observation systems extend the period of observation.
William W. Kellogg
Senior Scientist (Retired)
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado
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DEDICATION
T
he last two decades have been an exciting and fruitful time in the
development and utilization of techniques for the passive-micro-
wave remote sensing of sea ice. The generative event that caused
this scientific advance occurred in June 1967, when some of us
who had manned the drifting ice Station Alpha in the Arctic Ocean during
the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958) met with the late Dr.
William Nordberg of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to discuss our
results. He was a man of great vision, knowledge, and energy, and it was
serendipitous that he became interested in sea ice at the time he was
developing the 19-GHz Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer
(ESMR) made by the Aerojet Corporation, which was to be the first aircraft-
borne passive-microwave imager. Within a few months of our meeting, we
were testing the ESMR over the Beaufort Sea in the NASA Galileo ICV-990
Airborne Laboratory. Under Bill Nordberg's leadership and drive, the
system was flown during the late 1960s and early 1970s with great success.
This success led to the launching of ESMR onboard the Nimbus 5 satellite,
which acquired useful sea ice data for almost 4 years. Subsequently, Bill
Nordberg was one of the key leaders who worked for the development and
launching of the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR),
and he gave unstinting encouragement and help to the SMMR Team. On the
day before he died in August 1976, he heartily wished us an even greater
success with SMMR than we had with ESMR. His wish has been fulfilled.
SMMR has been extraordinarily successful during its nearly 9-year lifetime.
Bill was our friend and mentor. Still missing him deeply, we dedicate this
book to his memory.
XI