Remote Sensing Observations of Melt Ponds on Top of Antarctic SEA ICE Using Sentinel-3 Data.

Contrary to the sea ice surface melt during Arctic summer, melt ponds on top of the Antarctic sea ice during austral summer are thought to be rare. Their observations are limited to few occasional sightings and no regular dataset is published till now. In this work, we employ an existing remote sensing method which was already applied in the Arctic and for the first time detect potential surface melt areas on top of the Antarctic sea ice at a regional to global scale using Sentinel-3 data. We confirm the occurrence of melt ponds in Lutzow-Holm Bay in the vicinity of the Showa Station observed in situ in January 2017 and detect surface melt in the following years 2018-2020. We also perform global processing of the Antarctic sea ice to detect further regions of potential surface melt.