Sensors onboard the Sentinel-3 satellite of the Copernicus programme measure snow and ice optical properties (SICE) across Earth’s surface to track changes in surface albedo, with higher resolution (300 m) than earlier Earth observation satellites.
Sentinel-3 proves instrumental in tracking melting land ice - Sentinel Success Stories
Sentinel-3 proves instrumental in tracking melting land ice
Sensors on Copernicus Sentinel-3 that measure snow and ice properties, have been used to develop a fast and accurate approach for monitoring the extent of land ice melt.
Surface melting contributes to a large amount of land ice melt in Greenland and the Arctic. A key mechanism in surface melting is changing surface reflectivity, or albedo – the fraction of light reflected off an ice sheet or snow-covered surface.
The researchers developed an automated open-source processing chain to determine daily albedo of glaciated areas.
The SICE software was successfully used to retrieve snow properties over Greenland and examine snow pollution in the interior of the Antarctic ice sheet.
As our climate crisis accelerates the transformation of the frozen parts of Earth’s system, optical data from Sentinel-3 prove instrumental in monitoring land ice mass loss.
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