Winter navigation in the Northern Sea Route using Radarsat data

The results are presented of the first winter ice navigation demonstration, using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the Canadian satellite RADARSAT, onboard the nuclear icebreaker Sovetskiy Soyuz in the Kara Sea region in April–May 1998. While ERS SAR data only could cover part of the sea ice in this large area, the demonstration showed that RADARSAT ScanSAR images with 100 m pixel size could be used to map all relevant ice areas with a few 500 × 500 km scenes. SAR images transferred onboard icebreakers in near real time offer an excellent possibility to select optimal sailing routes in difficult ice conditions such as those that were encountered by this expedition. SAR images were also used for planning of operations prior to the expedition. This study compares sub-satellite sea-ice observations with RADARSAT SAR as well as Okean side-looking radar (SLR) signatures of the major ice types and features found in the Kara Sea during winter. Wide-swath SAR images will become available from several new satellites in the near future, such as Envisat, scheduled in 2001, and RADARSAT-2, in 2002. Satellite SAR images will therefore play an increasingly important role in operational ice monitoring both in the Northern Sea Route and in other ice areas

Bistatic radar · Climatology · Geography · Meteorology · Radar · Radar imaging · Remote sensing · Satellite · Sea ice · Space-based radar · Synthetic aperture radar · Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics · Computer Science · Cryospheric studies and observations · Engineering · Geology · Methane Hydrates and Related Phenomena