Ku‐ and Ka‐Band Polarimetric Radar Waveforms and Snow Depth Estimation Over Multi‐Year Antarctic Sea Ice in the Weddell Sea

Antarctic sea ice has seen recent rapid declines in extent, but it remains unclear whether this isaccompanied by thinning. Due to the relative abundance and complexity of overlying snow on sea ice, radaraltimetry methods routinely deployed for sea ice thickness estimation in the Arctic are difficult to apply inAntarctica. We present nadir‐looking radar waveforms from the first deployment of the KuKa surface‐basedradar on Antarctic sea ice, specifically multi‐year sea ice in the Weddell Sea marginal ice zone with a thick snowcover. Coincident snow pits revealed thick layers of snow which were exposed to the summer melt season andsuperimposed ice. Our instrument detects only very small amount of co‐polarized radar backscatter from the seaice surface, suggesting that conventional satellite altimeters may not always range to this interface. However,polarimetric snow depth determination performs well, with r2 of 0.76 between measured and KuKa‐estimatedsnow depths.

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