HR: 0800h
AN: C11B-0434    [Abstracts]
TI: Making sea ice Motion Data From RGPS More Accessible
AU: * Gens, R
EM: rgens@asf.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Satellite Facility, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Barker, E
EM: ebarker@asf.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Satellite Facility, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Backstrom, L
EM: larsg@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Satellite Facility, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr., Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AB: The Radarsat Geophysical Processing System (RGPS) was designed to generate sea ice products providing information about sea ice motion, deformation and sea ice thickness. Radarsat-1 ScanSAR Wide B (SWB) imagery has been acquired over more than a decade for the Arctic Ocean with a spatial resolution of 100 m. At the beginning of each winter season a regular grid is initialized and the grid points are tracked over the season to monitor the sea ice motion. With the changing ice conditions the regular grid becomes distorted in shape and location. The distorted Lagrangian grid is used to generate the RGPS data products which reflect the ice condition for a three-day snapshot. These products are currently distributed in a custom designed binary format. They are only used for the long-term monitoring of sea ice on the Arctic basin scale, hence the data is vastly underutilized. The resolution also allows long-term monitoring studies on the regional scale as well as on a local scale. The goal of this prototype development is to make the RGPS data more accessible to allow the data to be used at the regional and local scale, e.g. to develop lead typologies or verify ice charting forecasts. A prototype has been developed that makes the RGPS data more accessible to the research community. A number of raster and vector products are generated for the nominal three-day snapshot. The image mosaics for the part of the Arctic basin that is covered in the snapshot have a 500 m spatial resolution. Basic metadata are provided that allow the user to identify features of interest in the mosaics and their corresponding image within an image data coverage layer. With this metadata the imagery of interest can be directly ordered. Additionally, a weather data layer is derived from model data. For RGPS data that has already been processed the sea ice monitoring information a sea ice layer is created that include all the relevant information from the RGPS database. These vector layers are now available in the commonly used ArcGIS shape file format. This allows for a more streamlined and user friendly access to RGPS data. Image mosaics from more than a decade can now be used for long-term monitoring of the Arctic basin. Based on this prototype the study of sea ice phenomena at regional and local scale becomes more feasible.
DE: 0530 Data presentation and visualization
DE: 0750 Sea ice (4540)
DE: 0758 Remote sensing
DE: 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes (0700, 0750, 0752, 0754)
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting