scholarly journals Arctic sea ice cover data from spaceborne synthetic aperture radar by deep learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 2723-2742
Author(s):  
Yi-Ran Wang ◽  
Xiao-Ming Li
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Sea Ice ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Ice Cover ◽  
Synthetic Aperture ◽  
Sea Ice Concentration ◽  
Ice Concentration ◽  
Aperture Radar

Abstract. Widely used sea ice concentration and sea ice cover in polar regions are derived mainly from spaceborne microwave radiometer and scatterometer data, and the typical spatial resolution of these products ranges from several to dozens of kilometers. Due to dramatic changes in polar sea ice, high-resolution sea ice cover data are drawing increasing attention for polar navigation, environmental research, and offshore operations. In this paper, we focused on developing an approach for deriving a high-resolution sea ice cover product for the Arctic using Sentinel-1 (S1) dual-polarization (horizontal-horizontal, HH, and horizontal-vertical, HV) data in extra wide swath (EW) mode. The approach for discriminating sea ice from open water by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is based on a modified U-Net architecture, a deep learning network. By employing an integrated stacking model to combine multiple U-Net classifiers with diverse specializations, sea ice segmentation is achieved with superior accuracy over any individual classifier. We applied the proposed approach to over 28 000 S1 EW images acquired in 2019 to obtain sea ice cover products in a high spatial resolution of 400 m. The validation by 96 cases of visual interpretation results shows an overall accuracy of 96.10 %. The S1-derived sea ice cover was converted to concentration and then compared with Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) sea ice concentration data, showing an average absolute difference of 5.55 % with seasonal fluctuations. A direct comparison with Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) daily sea ice cover data achieves an average accuracy of 93.98 %. These results show that the developed S1-derived sea ice cover results are comparable to the AMSR and IMS data in terms of overall accuracy but superior to these data in presenting detailed sea ice cover information, particularly in the marginal ice zone (MIZ). Data are available at https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00273 (Wang and Li, 2020).

scholarly journals Arctic sea ice cover data from spaceborne SAR by deep learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Ran Wang ◽  
Xiao-Ming Li
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Sea Ice ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Ice Cover ◽  
Arctic Sea Ice ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Absolute Difference ◽  
Sea Ice Concentration ◽  
Ice Concentration

Abstract. Widely used sea ice concentration and sea ice cover in polar regions are derived mainly from spaceborne microwave radiometer and scatterometer data, and the typical spatial resolution of these products ranges from several to dozens of kilometers. Due to dramatic changes in polar sea ice, high-resolution sea ice cover data are drawing increasing attention for polar navigation, environmental research, and offshore operations. In this paper, we focused on developing an approach for deriving a high-resolution sea ice cover product for the Arctic using Sentinel-1 (S1) dual-polarization (horizontal-horizontal, HH, and horizontal-vertical, HV) data in extra wide swath (EW) mode. The approach for discriminating sea ice from open water by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is based on a modified U-Net architecture, a deep learning network. By employing an integrated stacking model to combine multiple U-Net classifiers with diverse specializations, sea ice segmentation is achieved with superior accuracy over any individual classifier. We applied the proposed approach to over 28,000 S1 EW images acquired in 2019 to obtain sea ice cover products in a high spatial resolution of 400 m. By converting the S1-derived sea ice cover to concentration and then compared with Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) sea ice concentration data, showing an average absolute difference of 5.55 % with seasonal fluctuations. A direct comparison with Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) daily sea ice cover data achieves an average accuracy of 93.98 %. These results show that the developed S1-derived sea ice cover results are comparable to the AMSR and IMS data in terms of overall accuracy but superior to these data in presenting detailed sea ice cover information, particularly in the marginal ice zone (MIZ). Data are available at: https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.00273 (Wang and Li, 2020).

scholarly journals Consistent ice and open water classification combining historical synthetic aperture radar satellite images from ERS-1/2, Envisat ASAR, RADARSAT-2 and Sentinel-1A/B

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (82) ◽  
pp. 40-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Malin Johansson ◽  
Eirik Malnes ◽  
Sebastian Gerland ◽  
Anca Cristea ◽  
Anthony P. Doulgeris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar ◽  
Satellite Images ◽  
Satellite Image ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Ice Cover ◽  
Arctic Sea Ice ◽  
Synthetic Aperture ◽  
Envisat Asar ◽  
Aperture Radar

AbstractSynthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite images are used to monitor Arctic sea ice, with systematic data records dating back to 1991. We propose a semi-supervised classification method that separates open water from sea ice and can utilise ERS-1/2, Envisat ASAR, RADARSAT-2 and Sentinel-1 SAR images. The classification combines automatic segmentation with a manual segment selection stage. The segmentation algorithm requires only the backscatter intensities and incidence angle values as input, therefore can be used to establish a consistent decadal sea ice record. In this study we investigate the sea ice conditions in two Svalbard fjords, Kongsfjorden and Rijpfjorden. Both fjords have a seasonal ice cover, though Rijpfjorden has a longer sea ice season. The satellite image dataset has weekly to daily records from 2002 until now, and less frequent records between 1991 and 2002. Time overlap between different sensors is investigated to ensure consistency in the reported sea ice cover. The classification results have been compared to high-resolution SAR data as well as in-situ measurements and sea ice maps from Ny-Ålesund. For both fjords the length of the sea ice season has shortened since 2002 and for Kongsfjorden the maximum sea ice coverage is significantly lower after 2006.

scholarly journals Comparison of Target Detectors to Identify Icebergs in Quad-Polarimetric L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1753
Author(s):  
Johnson Bailey ◽  
Armando Marino ◽  
Vahid Akbari
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar ◽  
Roc Curves ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
Open Ocean ◽  
Synthetic Aperture ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar Data ◽  
Whitening Filter ◽  
Aperture Radar

Icebergs represent hazards to ships and maritime activities and therefore their detection is essential. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites are very useful for this, due to their capability to acquire data under cloud cover and during day and night passes. In this work, we compared six state-of-the-art polarimetric target detectors to test their performance and ability to detect small-sized icebergs <120 m in four locations in Greenland. We used four single-look complex (SLC) ALOS-2 quad-polarimetric images from JAXA for quad-polarimetric detection and we compared with dual-polarimetric detectors using only the channels HH and HV. We also compared these detectors with single-polarimetric intensity channels and we tested using two scenarios: open ocean and sea ice. Our results show that the multi-look polarimetric whitening filter (MPWF) and the optimal polarimetric detector (OPD) provide the most optimal performance in quad- and dual-polarimetric mode detection. The analysis shows that, overall, quad-polarimetric detectors provide the best detection performance. When the false alarm rate (PF) is fixed to 10-5, the probabilities of detection (PD) are 0.99 in open ocean and 0.90 in sea ice. Dual-polarimetric or single-polarimetric detectors show an overall reduction in performance (the ROC curves show a decrease), but this degradation is not very large (<0.1) when the value of false alarms is relatively high (i.e., we are interested in bigger icebergs with a brighter backscattering >120 m, as they are easier to detect). However, the differences between quad- and dual- or single-polarimetric detectors became much more evident when the PF value was fixed to low detection probabilities 10-6 (i.e., smaller icebergs). In the single-polarimetric mode, the HV channel showed PD values of 0.62 for open ocean and 0.26 for sea ice, compared to values of 0.81 (open ocean) and 0.77 (sea ice) obtained with quad-polarimetric detectors.

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