AI-ready Snow Radar Echogram Dataset (SRED) for climate change monitoring
This addresses the lack of standardized data for climate change monitoring in polar regions, enabling reliable testing and comparison of deep learning methods for ice sheet dynamics, though it is incremental as it provides a new dataset rather than a novel method.
The study introduces the first comprehensive deep learning-ready radar echogram dataset (SRED) for tracking internal layers in ice sheets, containing 13,717 labeled and 57,815 weakly-labeled echograms, and shows that current segmentation algorithms can identify layers but advanced models are needed for direct snow depth extraction.
Tracking internal layers in radar echograms with high accuracy is essential for understanding ice sheet dynamics and quantifying the impact of accelerated ice discharge in Greenland and other polar regions due to contemporary global climate warming. Deep learning algorithms have become the leading approach for automating this task, but the absence of a standardized and well-annotated echogram dataset has hindered the ability to test and compare algorithms reliably, limiting the advancement of state-of-the-art methods for the radar echogram layer tracking problem. This study introduces the first comprehensive ``deep learning ready'' radar echogram dataset derived from Snow Radar airborne data collected during the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Operation Ice Bridge (OIB) mission in 2012. The dataset contains 13,717 labeled and 57,815 weakly-labeled echograms covering diverse snow zones (dry, ablation, wet) with varying along-track resolutions. To demonstrate its utility, we evaluated the performance of five deep learning models on the dataset. Our results show that while current computer vision segmentation algorithms can identify and track snow layer pixels in echogram images, advanced end-to-end models are needed to directly extract snow depth and annual accumulation from echograms, reducing or eliminating post-processing. The dataset and accompanying benchmarking framework provide a valuable resource for advancing radar echogram layer tracking and snow accumulation estimation, advancing our understanding of polar ice sheets response to climate warming.