The cryosphere, that region of the world where water is temporarily or permanently frozen, plays a crucial role on our planet. Recent developments in remote sensing techniques, and the acquisition of new data sets, have resulted in significant advances in our understanding of all components of the cryosphere and its processes.

This book, based on contributions from 40 leading experts, offers a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the methods, techniques and recent advances in applications of remote sensing of the cryosphere. Examples of the topics covered include: snow extent, depth, grain-size and impurities surface and subsurface melting glaciers accumulation over the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets ice thickness and velocities gravimetric measurements from space sea, lake and river ice frozen ground and permafrost fieldwork activities recent and future cryosphere-oriented missions and experiments

All figures are in color and provide an excellent visual accompaniment to the technical and scientific aspect of the book.

Readership: Senior undergraduates, Masters and PhD Students, PostDocs and Researchers in cryosphere science and remote sensing.Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere is the significant first volume in the newCryosphere Science Series. This new series comprises volumes that are at the cutting edge of new research, or provide focussed interdisciplinary reviews of key aspects of the science.

Marco Tedesco is Associate Professor at the City College of New York, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and is founder and director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at CCNY.

List of contributors xv

Cryosphere Science: Series Preface xix

Preface xxi

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the companion website xxiv

1 Remote sensing and the cryosphere 1Marco Tedesco

2 Electromagnetic properties of components of the cryosphere 17Marco Tedesco

3 Remote sensing of snow extent 31Dorothy K. Hall, Allan Frei, and Stephen J. Déry

4 Remote sensing of snow albedo, grain size, and pollution from space 48Alexander A. Khokanovsky

5 Remote sensing of snow depth and snow water equivalent 73Marco Tedesco, Chris Derksen, Jeffrey S. Deems, and James L. Foster

6 Remote sensing of melting snow and ice 99Marco Tedesco,Thomas Mote, Konrad Steffen, Dorothy K. Hall, and Waleed Abdalati

7 Remote sensing of glaciers 123Bruce H. Raup, Liss M. Andreassen, Tobias Bolch, and Suzanne Bevan

8 Remote sensing of accumulation over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets 157Lora Koenig, Richard Forster, Ludovic Brucker, and Julie Miller

9 Remote sensing of ice thickness and surface velocity 187Prasad Gogineni and Jie-Bang Yan

10 Gravimetry measurements from space 231Scott B. Luthcke, D.D. Rowlands, T.J. Sabaka, B.D. Loomis, M. Horwath, and A.A. Arendt

11 Remote sensing of sea ice 248Walter N. Meier and Thorsten Markus

12 Remote sensing of lake and river ice 273Claude R. Duguay, Monique Bernier, Yves Gauthier, and Alexei Kouraev

13 Remote sensing of permafrost and frozen ground 307Sebastian Westermann, Claude R. Duguay, Guido Grosse, and Andreas Kääb

14 Field measurements for remote sensing of the cryosphere 345Hans-Peter Marshall, Robert L. Hawley, and Marco Tedesco

15 Remote sensing missions and the cryosphere 382Marco Tedesco, Tommaso Parrinello, CharlesWebb, and Thorsten Markus

Index 393