Polar Sea-ice Classification Using Enhanced Resolution Nscat Data

| The NASA scatterometer (NSCAT) collected Ku-band scatterometer measurements from Sept. 1996 to June 1997. These data are converted high resolution six day images of the polar regions through the use of the scatterometer image reconstruction with lter (SIRF) algorithm. SIRF produces images of A and B where A is o at 40 incidence and B is the incidence angle dependence of . A simple four-dimensional classi cation technique is proposed which uses the dual polarization parameters Av , Ah, Bv , and Bh. A k-means clustering classi cation can be used to separate pixels of the images with di ering scattering mechanisms. This method also adapts to the seasonal characteristics of cluster migration by converging to the locally optimal cluster centroids. While validation data was not available at the time of this writing, the method is shown to have high correlation with the NSIDC SSM/I derived multiyear ice maps.