Sea ice thickness information is needed for climate modeling and ship operations. Here a method to detect the thickness of sea ice up to 50 cm during the freezeup season based on high incidence angle observations of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite working at 1.4 GHz is suggested. By comparison of thermodynamic ice growth data with SMOS brightness temperatures, a high correlation to intensity and an anti correlation to the difference between vertically and horizontally polarised brightness temperatures at incidence angles between 40 and 50 ° are found and used to develop an empirical retrieval sensitive to thin sea ice up to 50 cm thickness. It shows high correlations with ice thickness data from airborne measurements and reasonable ice thickness patterns for the Arctic freeze up period.