Snow cover detected by diurnal warming of sea ice/snow surface off Labrador in NOAA imagery

Four consecutive NOAA-9 infrared images show diurnal warming of the sea-ice surface off the coast of Labrador. For three subdomains with scales of approximately 100 km, the warming of the surface is obtained on the assumption that the warming of the surface is obtained on the assumption that the warming in one pixel is proportional to ice compactness, which is given in turn by brightness of a visible (daytime) image. A one-dimensional heat transfer equation for snow and ice is solved. An algorithm to estimate the snow thickness, which is required to calculate the heat flux through ice, from this extra warming is proposed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>