Influence of meter-scale wind-formed features on the variability of the microwave brightness temperature around Dome C in Antarctica

Abstract

Abstract. Space-borne passive microwave radiometers are widely used to retrieve information in snowy regions by exploiting the high sensitivity of microwave emission to snow properties. For the Antarctic Plateau, many studies presenting retrieval algorithms or numerical simulations have assumed, explicitly or not, that the subpixel-scale heterogeneity is negligible and that the retrieved properties were representative of whole pixels. In this paper, we investigate the spatial variations of brightness temperature over a range of a few kilometers in the Dome C area. Using ground-based radiometers towed by a vehicle allowing measurements with meter resolution, we collected brightness temperature transects at 11, 19 and 37 GHz at horizontal and vertical polarizations. The most remarkable observation was a series of regular undulations of the signal with a significant amplitude of up to 10 K at 37 GHz and a quasi-period of 30–50 m. In contrast, the variability at longer length scales seemed to be weak in the investigated area and the mean brightness temperature was close to AMSR-E and WindSat satellite observations for all the frequencies and polarisations. To establish a link between the snow characteristics and undulation-scale variations of microwave emission, we collected detailed snow grain size and density profiles to run the DMRT-ML microwave emission model at two points where opposite extrema of brightness temperature were observed. The numerical simulations revealed that the difference in density of the upper first meter of the snowpack explained most of the brightness temperature variations. In addition, we found in the field that these variations of density were linked to the hardness of the snowpack. Areas of hard snow – probably formed by the wind – were clearly visible and covered as much as 39% of the investigated area. Their brightness temperature was higher than in normal areas. This result implied that the microwave emission measured by satellites over Dome C is more complex than expected and very likely depends on the areal proportion of the two different types of areas having distinct snow properties.