PolarLakes - Sentinel-1/2 - Antarctica, Bi-weekly/Annually

The PolarLakes dataset provides bi-weekly observations of supraglacial lakes on Antarctic ice shelves, utilizing imagery from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 to address time series gaps caused by frequent cloud cover. These observations detect the extents of supraglacial lakes with a U-Net model for every two weeks from November to March, with each sensor operating independently before the data is merged. The resulting bi-weekly product reflects the maximum lake extents for the first and second halves of each month. When combined for an entire season, the dataset consolidates all bi-weekly records over these five months, allowing for analysis of the maximum lake extent per season and the frequency of lake formation, which can occur up to ten times (5 months á two weeks). The year indicated in the dataset corresponds to January of the melt season, as this month typically experiences the highest melt rates (e.g., 2023 refers to the season from November 2022 to March 2023). The aggregation of all annual datasets creates a recurrence layer that illustrates the frequency of lake presence throughout the entire observation period, which spans from 2014 to 2024, depending on satellite data availability for each ice shelf. The PolarLakes dataset provides valuable insights into the dynamics of supraglacial lakes and serves as a crucial resource for hydrological and climate modeling.

Citation proposal
Celia Baumhoer (German Aerospace Center (DLR)). PolarLakes - Sentinel-1/2 - Antarctica, Bi-weekly/Annually. https://gdk.gdi-de.org/geonetwork/srv/api/records/99749b06-345e-4aef-ae4e-d18995f46a75

INSPIRE
SDS

INSPIRE

Identification

File identifier: 99749b06-345e-4aef-ae4e-d18995f46a75 XML

Hierarchy level: Series

Online resource

Protocol: WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

Protocol: WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

Resource identifier

code: https://geoservice.dlr.de/catalogue/srv/metadata/99749b06-345e-4aef-ae4e-d18995f46a75

Metadata language: English

Spatial representation type: Grid

Encoding

Format: GeoTiff

Projection

Classification of data and services

Topic category

Environment

Classification of data and services

Coupled resource

Classification of data and services

Coupled resource

Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ( Theme )

Hydrography
Land cover

Other keywords

Keywords

DLR
EOC
supraglacial lakes
Antarctica
hydrology
ice sheet
water
deep learning
Sentinel-1
Sentinel-2
opendata

Keywords ( Place )

regional

Geographic coverage

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Date ( Creation ): 2025-06-11T00:00:00

Quality and validity

Lineage: PolarLakes maximum lake extents are derived from Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical imagery between November and March to cover the melt season in Antarctica.