Does UTF-16 have an alternative representation?
Yes, all characters represented in UTF-16, both those represented with 16 bits and those with a surrogate pair, can be represented as a single 32-bit unit in UTF-32. This single 4 code unit corresponds to the Unicode scalar value, which is the abstract number associated with a Unicode character. UTF-32 is a subset of the encoding mechanism called UCS-4 in ISO 10646. For more information, see UTR #19: UTF-32.
