A theoretical analysis on the sensitivity of microwave emission to snow parameters

Abstract

Snow cover represents the major part of the cryosphere and is an important component of the hydrological cycle. Moreover, it is a key indicator of global warming. In the last decades, microwave radiometry has proved to be very powerful for monitoring the snow cover parameters (e.g. the extent area and the water equivalent). By using electromagnetic models, which simulate emission and scattering from natural surfaces it is possible to interpret the electromagnetic measurements and to perform the retrieval of the parameters that characterize the soil and its covers. This work aims at investigating the sensitivity of microwave emission to snow parameters by means of an advanced model called IRIDE (Ifac RadiatIve Dry snow Emission model). The model is obtained by properly coupling the advanced integral equation method and the dense media radiative transfer theory under the quasi-crystalline approximation. The simulations performed by means of IRIDE allowed us to determine the sensitivity of the brightness temperature to the most interesting snow parameters (thickness, water equivalent and wetness of snow) as a function of different observation configurations (frequency, polarization and incidence angle).