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An oil-in-sea ice mesocosm experiment was conducted at the University of Manitoba Sea-Ice Environmental Research Facility from January to March 2016 in which geophysical and electromagnetic parameters of the ice were measured, and general observations about the oil-contaminated ice were made. From the experimental measurements, the presence of crude oil appears to affect the temperature and bulk salinity profiles as well as the normalized radar cross section (NRCS) of the contaminated young sea ice. The measured temperature and bulk salinity profiles of the ice, as well as the crude oil distribution within the ice, were used to model the permittivity profile of the oil-contaminated ice by adapting two mixture models commonly used to describe sea ice to account for the presence of oil. Permittivity modeling results were used to simulate the NRCS of the oil-contaminated sea ice in an effort to determine the accuracy of the models. In addition, the application of X-ray microtomography in modeling the dielectric profile of oil-contaminated sea ice was examined. The sensitivity of the permittivity models for oil-contaminated sea ice to changes in temperature, frequency, and oil volume fraction was also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multidisciplinary case study on a crude oil injection experiment in an artificially grown young sea ice environment under controlled conditions. In particular, the changes in the geophysical and electromagnetic responses of the sea ice to oil introduction are investigated for this experiment. Furthermore, we perform a preliminary study on the detection of oil spills utilizing the normalized radar cross section (NRCS) data collected by a C-band scatterometer is presented. To this end, an inversion scheme is introduced that retrieves the effective complex permittivity of the domain prior and after oil injection by comparing the simulated and calibrated measured NRCS data, while roughness parameters calculated using lidar are utilized as prior information. Once the complex permittivity values are obtained, the volume fraction of oil within the sea ice is found using a mixture formula. Based on this volume fraction, a binary detection of oil presence seems to be possible for this test case. Finally, the possible sources of error in the retrieved effective volume fraction, which is an overestimate of the actual value, are identified and discussed by macrolevel and microlevel analyses through bulk salinity measurements and X-ray imagery of the samples, as well as a brief chemical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]