Frost flowers are highly saline ice crystals which grow on the surface of new ice.
These structures have been observed all over the Arctic but until recently were regarded only as a curiosity. Our research shows that frost flowers both increase the radar backscattering and decrease the radiometric surface temperature of new sea ice. They show scenes of sea ice near the New Siberian Islands in shallow seas north of Siberia. The images, which have been enhanced by false-coloring, show some interesting areas of new ice growth, and demonstrate the dramatic appearance of frost flowers in SAR imagery. The horizontal scale of these images is approximately 20 km.