IEEE NS and HM: Snowmelt in antarctica as derived from SMOS observations

In Antarctica, the coastal and ice-shelves areas are affected by snowmelt during the austral summer. The length and extend of this melting period are key parameters in the study of climate and its interannual variations in these regions. Melting events have a significant impact on the microwave emissivity of the surface. Thus, satellite microwave observations can be use in order to provide useful information over the whole Antarctic coast and ice-shelves. Several studies exploited the 19- and 37-GHz long time series to retrieve snowmelt events. Due to the large penetration depth at L-band in regard of higher microwave frequencies, SMOS observations (1.4-GHz) could give additional information. In this study, the algorithms developed in these previous works are used to detect melt from the SMOS brightness temperature at horizontal polarization. Snowmelt product is obtained from July 2010 and June 2015 with SMOS observations.