Correlation function studies for snow and ice

Abstract

In the interpretation of active and passive microwave remote sensing data, the random medium model has been used to characterize snow and ice fields. A correlation function is used to describe the random permittivity fluctuations with its associated mean and variance, and correlation lengths. Several snow and ice samples are studied in this paper, and the correlation functions are shown to be exponential in character with correlation lengths corresponding to the actual size of the ice particles in snow or air bubbles in ice.