Retrieval from AMSR-E data of the snow temperature profile at Dome-C Antarctica

The Antarctic plateau is the highest part of the east Antarctic ice-cap that extends for several hundred kilometers with an average altitude of close to 3000 m a.s.l.. In this paper, we analyze the temporal variability of multi-frequency microwave emission from the area surrounding the Dome-C scientific station, using AMSR-E data collected throughout 2005 and 2006, and snow temperatures measured at different depths down to 10m below the surface. The brightness temperature variability is associated with the temperature fluctuation at different depths and a simple method was developed for inverting these relationships and for exploiting the possibility of retrieving the snow temperature profiles from satellite data. © 2007 IEEE.