Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I
Passive Microwave Data Help Page

QuickTime Animations of Monthly Mean Sea Ice Concentrations from Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave Data Set

QuickTime movies of Arctic and Antarctic annual sea ice concentrations have been created using monthly images, provided by Goddard Space Flight Center, for the years 1979-1996. GSFC's standard color bar was used to describe sea ice concentrations in four percent intervals. Ice concentrations less than 12 percent are considered open water.

The animations were created from GIF files using the SGI utility dmconvert. Each animation file is approximately 8.31 MBytes in size and can be displayed by most web browsers using a QuickTime viewer which is compatible with a majority of computers and can be downloaded free of charge. The viewers operate as stand-alone executables, providing users the ability to step forward and backward through individual frames. Unix users can download a similar tool, xanim, which works on X-windows systems.

Data from four different satellites were used to create the monthly sea ice images:

          January 1979 through July 1987 - SMMR Nimbus-7 
          August 1987 through December 1991 - SSM/I DMSP F8 
          January 1992 through September 1995 - SSM/I DMSP F11 
          October 1995 through December 1996 - SSM/I DMSP F13

Antarctic Sea Ice Concentration Animations

Arctic Sea Ice Concentration Animations