ten years of seawinds on quikscat for snow applications十年的seawinds quikscat雪应用程序.pdf

Remote Sens. 2010, 2, 1142-1156; doi:10.3390/rs2041142 OPEN ACCESS Remote Sensing ISSN 2072-4292 /journal/remotesensing Review Ten Years of SeaWinds on QuikSCAT for Snow Applications Annett Bartsch Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Vienna University of Technology, Gusshausstrasse 27-29, Vienna, Austria; Tel.: +43-1-588-011-2221; Fax: +43-1-588-011-2290; E-Mail: ab@ipf.tuwien.ac.at Received: 2 March 2010; in revised form: 24 March 2010 / Accepted: 30 March 2010 / Published: 16 April 2010 Abstract: The scatterometer SeaWinds on QuikSCAT provided regular measurements at Ku-band from 1999 to 2009. Although it was designed for ocean applications, it has been frequently used for the assessment of seasonal snowmelt patterns aside from other terrestrial applications such as ice cap monitoring, phenology and urban mapping. This paper discusses general data characteristics of SeaWinds and reviews relevant change detection algorithms. Depending on the complexity of the method, parameters such as long-term noise and multiple event analyses were incorporated. Temporal averaging is a commonly accepted preprocessing step with consideration of diurnal, multi-day or seasonal averages. Keywords: scatterometer; Ku-band; snow; circumpolar 1. Introduction Microwave sensors operating at higher frequencies such as Ku-band (13.4 GHz, 2.1 cm wavelength) are especially sensitive to changes in snow (e.g., [1,2]). Microwave sensors can be used to detect ongoing snowmelt, whereas the detection capabilities of optical sensors is limited to snow