Extracting sea ice parameters from SAR imagettes

From raw ERS wavemode data, complex SAR images of size 5 km x 10 krn - so called imagettes - were computed using the BSAR processor at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Being collected every 200 km along the orbit, imagettes provide a relatively dense coverage especially over polar oceans up to 84,degrees North. Several statistical measures have been introduced for analysis of imagettes; classifying ice free and ice contaminated imagettes as well as deriving sea ice parameters such as ice concentration, deformation energy, and ridge frequency. The results are compared to SSM/I data and sea ice model results. In addition, a wavelet-based edge detector is used to examine the ice surface structure. Using the imagettes; in an automatic extraction system can provide global statistics of sea state and sea ice parameters from both upcoming ENVISAT and historic ERS data providing a 10 year dataset.