More than the sum of its parts? A merged satellite product from MODIS and AMSR2 sea ice concentration
Abstract
Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC), the fraction of a grid cell that is covered by sea ice, is relevant for a multitude of branches: physics (heat/momentum exchange), chemistry (gas exchange), biology (photosynthesis), navigation (location of pack ice) and others. It has been observed from passive microwave (PMW) radiometers on satellites continuously since 1979, providing an almost 40-year time series. However, the resolution is limited to typically 25 km which is good enough for climate studies but too coarse to properly resolve the ice edge or to show leads. The highest resolution from PMW sensors today is 5 km of the AMSR2 89 GHz channels. Thermal infrared (TIR) and visible (VIS) measurements provide much higher resolutions between 1 km (TIR) and 30 m (VIS, regional daily coverage). The higher resolutions come at the cost of depending on cloud-free fields of view (TIR and VIS) and daylight (VIS). We present a merged product of ASI-AMSR2 SIC (PMW) and MODIS SIC (TIR) at a nominal resolution of 1 km. This product benefits from both the independence of PMW towards cloud coverage and the high resolution of TIR data. An independent validation data set has been produced from manually selected, cloud-free Landsat VIS data at 30 m resolution. This dataset is used to evaluate the performance of the merged SIC dataset. Our results show that the merged product resolves features which are smeared out by the PMW data while benefitting from the PMW data in cloudy cases and is thus indeed more than the sum of its parts.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.C24B..05L
- Keywords:
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- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4207 Arctic and Antarctic oceanography;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL;
- 4262 Ocean observing systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL