The trend of Arctic sea ice extent is decreasing. After the historical sea ice minimum of 2007, a new sea ice minimum is reached early September 2011. The lower the sea ice extent is in summer, the larger is the area refreezing during winter, where the sea ice is therefore thinner. Thinner sea ice is more often broken into sheets while the open water between these sheets absorbs more radiation and so promote the ice melt. Therefore, the knowledge of the sea ice thickness is important for understanding and modeling the arctic sea ice cover. The satellite SMOS was launched in 2009 and observes at 1.4 GHz. This is the lowest microwave frequency used on satellite sensors today. It has a high penetration depths and is therefore suitable to retrieve the thickness of sea ice. It is to be investigated how the intensity, polarization and angular information of the sensor can be used to retrieve the sea ice thickness.

Start of doctoral thesis: 01st September, 2011
Defence of doctoral theses: 18th November, 2015