Integrated Climate Data Center

Sea-Ice concentration for Arctic & Antarctic (OSI-SAF, version 2)

Sea ice concentration distribution in the northern (left) and southern (right) hemisphere for February 10 and September 10, 2007, respectively. Note that sea ice concentrations are cut off at 15%.

 

Access

UNRESTRICTED

This data set is only available for a restricted user group, please contact us if you want to access these data.

RESTRICTED only accessable in ZMAW net or via CliSAP login  What does that mean?

View data via LAS

Data access via Filesystem

Use data via OPeNDAP

 

 

Description

Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data have been used to produce a new global sea-ice concentration data set gridded onto a Lambert-Azimuthal Equal Area grid with 12.5 km grid resolution. The sea ice concentration data available here have been computed using re-processed brightness temperature observations that have been corrected in advance for inter-sensor differences. The sea-ice concentration retrieval algorithm used has been carefully selected based on the results of an algorithm intercomparison study. The data set comprises the sea ice concentration, an error estimate, and a quality flag for each day and grid cell.

The Product User Manual and the Validation Report give details about the sea-ice concentration retrieval, additional filters, optimization procedures, and the error estimation as well as some aspects about the validation.

The figure on top of the page give examples of the sea-ice concentration distribution in the northern and southern hemisphere for both summer and winter on the respective hemisphere.

 

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Parameters

Name Unit
Sea ice concentration 0-100%
Standard deviation 0-100%
Quality flag signed character 0-101 (see Product User Manual)

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Coverage, spatial and temporal resolution

Period and temporal resolution: 

  • October 26, 1978, to July 07, 1987
  • Every other day
  • July 12, 1987 to September 30, 2009
  • Daily

Missing days are given in the Product User Manual.

Coverage and spatial resolution:

  • Northern and Southern Hemisphere
  • Spatial resolution: 12.5 km x 12.5 km, EASE grid (see http://nsidc.org/data/ease/), and 10 km x 10 km, polar-stereographic grid, tangential plane at 70°N and 70°S, respectively (see Product User Manual)
  • Geographic longitude: 0°E to 360°E
  • Geographic latitude: about 41°N and 41°S to 90°N and 90°S, respectively, coverage is larger in the grid corners
  • Dimensions: 608 columns x 896 rows (Northern hemisphere, 12.5 km); 760 columns x 1120 rows (Northern hemisphere, 10 km); 632 columns x 664 rows (Southern hemisphere, 12.5 km); 790 columns x 830 rows (Southern hemisphere, 10 km)
  • Altitude: 0.0 m

Format:

  • NetCDF

This is version 2 of this data set.

 

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Data quality

For each grid cell and each available day an error estimate and a quality flag is given.

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Contact

CliSAP / ICDC:

Name: Stefan Kern

Institute: CliSAP / KlimaCampus / ICDC

Email: stefan.kern@we dont want spamzmaw.de

 

OSISAF:

Name: Steinar Eastwood

Institute: Norwegian Meteorological Institute

Email: osisaf-manager@we dont want spammet.no

 

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Data citation

EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satelitte Application Facility. Global sea ice concentration reprocessing dataset 1978-2009 (v2, 2011), [Online]. Norwegian and Danish Meteorological Institutes. Available from osisaf.met.no.

 

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