Publication Date:
2018-03-12
Description:
We studied two issues to be considered in the calculation of parameters characterizing sea
ice deformation: the effect of uncertainties in an automatically retrieved sea ice drift field, and the
influence of the type of drift vector grid. Sea ice deformation changes the local ice mass balance
and the interaction between atmosphere, ice, and ocean, and constitutes a hazard to marine traffic
and operations. Due to numerical effects, the results of deformation retrievals may predict, e.g.,
openings and closings of the ice cover that do not exist in reality. We focus specifically on fields
of ice drift obtained from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and analyze the Propagated
Drift Retrieval Error (PDRE) and the Boundary Definition Error (BDE). From the theory of error
propagation, the PDRE for the calculated deformation parameters can be estimated. To quantify the
BDE, we devise five different grid types and compare theoretical expectation and numerical results
for different deformation parameters assuming three scenarios: pure divergence, pure shear, and a
mixture of both. Our findings for both sources of error help to set up optimal deformation retrieval
schemes and are also useful for other applications working with vector fields and scalar parameters
derived therefrom.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
isiRev
Format:
application/pdf
