NOAA@NSIDC is pleased to announce that the Sea Ice Index, Version 3 data set accessible through the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), has been updated from near-real-time data to final data for the time period 01 January 2022 through 31 December 2022. Also, the daily and monthly GeoTIFF files for the period 01 January 2021 to present have been reprocessed. These GeoTIFFs are now in the same projection as those for the period 26 October 1978 to 31 December 2020, the NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic North and South projections (EPSG:3411 and EPSG:3412). There are now consistent projections for the north and south across the time series.
Initially, when the Sea Ice Index is first processed, it uses a near-real-time (NRT) sea ice concentration as its input. There can be data missing in this NRT product and fewer quality control procedures have been applied to it in comparison with the final sea ice concentration input data product from NASA Goddard. However, the final input product often lags behind the present by approximately one year. Using the NRT product means the Sea Ice Index has sea ice extent and concentration data for the previous day. When the final NASA Goddard sea ice concentration product becomes available, NOAA@NSIDC reprocesses these data for that period so that the more tightly quality controlled and gap filled input data are used for the Sea Ice Index computations. This has been done for the year 2022.
Data set DOI: https://doi.org/10.7265/N5K072F8