NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 5
Data set id:
G02202
DOI: 10.7265/rjzb-pf78
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
The major change in this version are the following:
* Added a prototype AMSR2 sea ice concentration.
* Uses the NASA Team 2 land spillover correction instead of the original NASA Team correction.
* Improved the Arctic pole hole filling.
* Uses a new land mask.
* The concentration variable (cdr_seaice_conc) contains concentration values only (no land mask).
* Added a separate surface type variable (surface_type_mask).
* Improved spatial interpolation of TBs.
* Includes the raw NT (raw_nt_seaice_conc) and BT (raw_bt_seaice_conc), maintaining full range of values instead of clipping at 100% for provenance and transparency.
* Updated the layout and names of variables, with added netCDF groups for better organization.
* Sea ice concentration values below 10% in the CDR are set to 0%.
* Fixed a bug in the BT tie points calculations.
* Fixed a bug in the one-sided temporal interpolation calculation.
In this section
  • Rendering Links ...
  • Rendering Links ...

Overview

This data set provides a Climate Data Record (CDR) of sea ice concentration from passive microwave data. The CDR algorithm output is a rule-based combination of ice concentration estimates from two well-established algorithms: the NASA Team (NT) algorithm (Cavalieri et al. 1984) and NASA Bootstrap (BT) algorithm (Comiso 1986). The CDR is a consistent, daily and monthly time series of sea ice concentrations from 25 October 1978 through the most recent processing for both the north and south polar regions. All data are on a 25 km x 25 km grid. Note: A near-real-time version of this data set also exists to fill the gap between the time that this data set is updated through to the present. The data set is called the Near-Real-Time NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration (https://nsidc.org/data/g10016).
Parameter(s):
SEA ICE CONCENTRATION
Platform(s):
DMSP 5D-2/F11, DMSP 5D-2/F13, DMSP 5D-2/F8, DMSP 5D-3/F17, GCOM-W1, Nimbus-7
Sensor(s):
AMSR2, SMMR, SSM/I, SSMIS
Data Format(s):
NetCDF
Temporal Coverage:
25 October 1978 to present
Temporal Resolution:
  • 1 day
  • 1 month
Spatial Resolution:
  • 12.5 km
  • 12.5 km
Spatial Reference System(s):
NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic North
EPSG:3411

NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic South
EPSG:3412
Spatial Coverage:
N:
-39.2
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
N:
90
S:
30.1
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

NOAA@NSIDC HTTPS File System

Get Data
Access and download NOAA@NSIDC data using a web browser, or through a command line utility such as WGET, or using programming languages such as R or Python.
NOAA@NSIDC HTTPS Access Guide
Type:
service
View Metadata

Documentation

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

Descriptions of and differences between the NASA Team and Bootstrap algorithms
NSIDC currently archives passive microwave sea ice concentration products based on two algorithms: the NASA Team algorithm and the Bootstrap algorithm. Both algorithms were developed by researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the 1980s.
Read More

How to Articles

How to access and download NOAA@NSIDC data
NOAA@NSIDC data recently transitioned to HTTPS. The directory structure has NOT changed, but the beginning of the URL has changed from: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/ to:
Read More
How to access NOAA@NSIDC data sets in PolarWatch
Currently three NOAA@NSIDC data sets are available in NOAA's PolarWatch Data Catalog. Please note that in the catalog the Climate Data Record (CDR) data sets are split up into Antarctic and Arctic data sets:
Read More
How to download CDR data from PolarWatch and map it using R
This external R tutorial guides you through an R script for the NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration data in PolarWatch:
Read More