User notice: Near-Real-Time NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 2

The Near-Real-Time NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 2 data set has been reprocessed to update the input data used in processing. For the past year, we inadvertently used data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) F17 instrument instead of the SSMIS F18 as stated in our user guide. This discrepancy occurred due to a technical oversight during our transition to a new file format for input data. We want to assure you that this change in data source has not significantly impacted the quality of the G10016 product. The SSMIS F17 and F18 instruments are identical in design and capability, making it highly unlikely that any differences in the product would be noticeable without detailed analysis.

Additionally, from September 12 – 17, the ground station that acquires the SSMIS data experienced technical issues, preventing data download. These issues were resolved on September 18. However, we were unable to receive a full day’s worth of data or recover any of the lost information. After careful consideration, we have decided to remove the data files for September 15–18 from the NRT record due to inaccuracies. While our code can perform temporal interpolation for small gaps (up to about 3 days), the 6-day gap exceeded our system's capabilities for accurate interpolation.

Data Set DOI: https://doi.org/10.7265/tgam-yv28