Cooperative Junior Research Group "Remote Sensing of Sea Ice"

Sea ice is a sensitive climate change indicator as it is reflected in the drastic reduction of the Arctic sea ice cover during recent decades. To observe the remote and vast sea ice areas in the Arctic and Antarctic satellite remote sensing is the method of choice.

The cooperative junior research group "Remote Sensing of Sea Ice" uses satellite measurements to derive sea ice quantities like sea ice area, thickness, and snow cover. For that purpose methods from radiometry to altimetry covering the microwave to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum are applied. By improving error estimates and merging different observations we aim to produce new sea ice datasets, which allow to gain a better understanding of the polar climate system.

The junior research group was established in August 2015 and is supported by the Institutional Strategy (M3 area) of the University of Bremen, funded by the German Excellence Initiative. The Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven is the non-university partner for this cooperative group. Besides IUP, where the junior research group is hosted, Marum is another university partner.

An overview of the topics worked on is given in the following sections.