The Cryospheric Remote Sensing Research Facility (CRSRF) was established in 2009 by Professors Claude Duguay and Richard Kelly with funding obtained from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.
Polarimetric ground-based scatterometer systems operating at Ku and X-band frequencies have been acquired to deepen our understanding of active microwave interactions with snow and ice properties. Our group is using the scatterometer systems and complementary field instruments to develop a rich understanding of radiative transfer and backscattering processes from snow and ice, and in the principles of snow and ice energy and mass balance processes. Graduate students are also being trained in the operation of automated weather stations with a suite of radiation and energy balance instruments, automatic ice profiler and snow depth systems as well as more traditional snow and ice field instruments such as snow tubes, ice corers and augers, density profilers and other standard snow survey techniques.
CRSRF provides the only Ku-/X-band scatterometer facility of its kind in North America. The infrastructure has previously been used in support of the CoReH2O satellite mission proposed to the European Space Agency. To date, the full suite of instruments has been deployed at several locations and sites (land, lake ice, sea ice) in Canada: Churchill, Manitoba; Resolute, Nunavut; and the Waterloo region.
Students Aaron Thompson and Vicky Vanthof assemble UW-Scat in the lab.