Arctic sea ice cover product based on spaceborne synthetic aperture radar

Based on the U-Net, one kind of architecture of deep learning, we developed a novel method of deriving sea ice cover information from spaceborne SAR data in high spatial resolution. Then we produced the relevant data product based on the ESA Sentinel-1 SAR data acquired in the Arctic using the proposed method.

The Sentinel-1A and 1B SAR satellites have been extensively acquired the so-called extra-wide (EW) swath mode data in the polar regions since their launch in 2014 and 2016. The EW data have a wide coverage of approximately 400 by 400 km and a pixel size of 40 by 40 m. The twins can acquired SAR data by approximately 2500 scenes each month in the Arctic.