Remote sensing of Greenland ice sheet surface characteristics using Sentinel 3 satellites

In recent decades, changes of global climate have had a profound effect on the cryosphere and in particular on polar glaciers. These glaciers, such as those in Greenland, have an important role in the global climate regulation via their low albedo, drive major currents by pouring fresh water into the ocean and are a major contributor to the sea level rise. Modeling the mass loss of those glacier is an important part in quantifying all of those effects. However, glaciers present a variety of snow and ice facies, that behave very differently depending on temperature, amount of snow fall and amount of snow melt. Describing and mapping snow facies over all polar glaciers is therefore primordial. In this project, we study previous methods to use remote sensing from passive microwave and radar satellites to map these facies, propose new methods to classify them and propose new methods to assess the quality of those classifications.