Polarimetric emission from anisotropic media for passive remote sensing of sea ice

The polarimetric emission from an anisotropic medium with applications to the passive microwave remote sensing of sea ice is investigated. Based on the fluctuation-dissipation theory, the Stokes vector is obtained for the thermally exicted electromagnetic radiation from an anisotropic object. By modeling sea ice as a layered anisotropic medium, the Stokes vector representing the polarimetric emission is illustrated for various geophysical conditions. It is found that the difference in the brightness temperatures measured at two surface temperatures is correlated with the thickness of the sea ice. For cases where the c-axis of sea ice is aligned or not random in the horizontal plane, the calculated brightness temperatures show a periodic variation when plotted as a function of the azimuthal angle of the observation direction, indicating that the polarimetric Stokes parameters can be used to detect the direction of c-axes in sea ice.