Remote Sensing Alaska with SARRIS

Author: Carter, Shawn, Winter Hydrology and Remote Sensing Desk Lead NOAA/NWS

Video Presentation

Abstract

The National Water Center is developing an experimental product to classify the extent and texture of river ice across the Northern Tier of the Contiguous United States and Alaska. The Synthetic Aperture Radar River Ice Surveillance (SARRIS) product is derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery acquired by European Space Agency Copernicus Programme Sentinel-1 satellites. The advantage of SARRIS over more classical river ice products produced from electro-optical satellites (i.e. VIIRS, Sentinel-2, Landsat, GOES) is the day/night and all-weather imaging capability of SAR. Through dark of night and the worst winter storms, Sentinel-1 is able to image land surface features with a 5-meter resolution. SARRIS is intended to increase situational awareness of not only the presence of river ice, but the morphology of the ice whether it is thin sheet ice, flows of frazil and pan ice, or jumbled ice at the bottom of an ice jam. This is currently the only known SAR derived publicly available river ice product at this scale. In this presentation, we will discuss how it is produced, the limitations of the product, and examples of how it has been used to coordinate emergency responses to ice jams.

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