ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENERGY FLUXES, DIELECTRIC-PROPERTIES, ANDMICROWAVE-SCATTERING OVER SNOW COVERED FIRST-YEAR SEA-ICE DURING THE SPRING TRANSITION PERIOD

In this research we investigate the seasonal nature of the co-variabil ity in surface energy balance variables, volume dielectrics, and micro wave scattering (ERS 1) of a snow-covered first-year sea ice surface d uring a spring transitional period. Variables required to derive the c omponents of the energy balance and dielectric properties were measure d during the Seasonal Sea Ice Monitoring and Modeling site in the Cana dian Arctic Archipelago in 1992. We observed that both the energy term s and dielectric properties followed a pattern similar to the total re lative scattering cross section (sigma(o)) over the seasonal transitio n from winter to spring. We explain this relationship through the impa ct of surface fluxes on dielectric and geophysical properties of the s now-covered first-year sea ice. We speculate that ice surface scatteri ng dominated the total scattering cross section sigma(o) prior to Juli an day 120 and that the snow volume contributed an increasing amount o f scattering to sigma(o) over the remainder of the season. From a mult ivariate statistical analysis we find that the surface temperature T-S and the net shortwave energy flux K explained a statistically signif icant amount of the variation observed in the seasonal evolution of si gma(o). An inverse relationship existed between both T-S and K relati ve to sigma(o), and the influence of T-S was approximately twice that of K in explaining the observed variation in sigma(o).