Estimating Firn Emissivity, from 1994 to1998, at the Ski Hi Automatic Weather Station on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Using Passive Microwave Data

Firn is the compacted snow layer that has remained at or near the surface of an ice sheet for longer than one season but has not yet compressed into glacial ice. Knowledge of firn surface temperature trends across the Antarctic Ice Sheet is useful for documenting and quantifying change and for providing a temporal and spatial context for Antarctic research performed during the upcoming International Polar Year (IPY). The spatial and temporal variability of firn emissivity and the factors that control it are not currently well known although satellite passive microwave radiometer data has been proven to be useful to obtain reasonable surface temperature trend estimates across limited temporal and spatial gaps in AWS coverage. Over the last decade, techniques using passive microwave data have been pioneered by a number of investigators; including Jezek et al.