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ICDC
CENIntegrated Climate Data Center ICDC

Photo: getty images/L. Calvetti

ESA-CCI Sea-Ice-ECV project

In an effort to quantify uncertainties in sea ice concentration (SIC) and sea ice thickness (SIT) and to select the most suitable approach to generate long time-series as required by climate models, ESA as initiated the so-called Climate Change Initiative: ESA-CCI project. Under the umbrella of this project a number of essential climate variables (ECV) are going to be re-processed and quality assessed. One of these ECVs is sea ice. The ESA-CCI Sea-Ice-ECV project was managed at NERSC, Norway, and terminated in July 2018.

The ESA-CCI Sea-Ice-ECV project will provide two data sets: the sea ice concentration (SIC) and the sea ice thickness (SIT). For both parameters, the optimal retrieval algorithm shall be sought, tested and the results validated. ICDC is responsible, e.g., for the quality assessment and validation of the ECV prototype products for SIC and SIT.

In contrast to phase 1 in phase 2 SIC data from two different hybrid algorithms are offered. One uses the 18.7 and 36.5 GHz channels of the AMSR sensors while the other one is based on data of the 6.9 and 36.5 GHz channels. The products differ in terms of grid resolution (25 km and 50 km) and quality.

The following links allow to access SIC (from phase 2) and SIT (from phase 2, for the Antarctic additionally from ICESat-1 (from phase 1) products as well as snow depth on Antarctic sea ice (as listed below).

We also offer sea-ice volume time series.

NEWS from June 2018:

Release of the SICCI-2 sea-ice thickness climate data record.

NEWS from December 2017:

The workshop report of the "Workshop on improved satellite retrievals of sea-ice concentration and sea-ice thickness for climate applications" can be downloaded HERE. Please contact Stefan Kern for oral and poster presentations.

NEWS from November 2017:

The AMSR2 sea-ice concentration time-series have been extended; this data now covers the time period 07-2012 through 05/2017 (see also News from March 10 2017).

NEWS from October 12 2017: On October 9-11, 2017, ICDC and MPI-Met jointly hosted a workshop closely related to the improved sea-ice data sets from phase 2: "Workshop on improved satellite retrievals of sea-ice concentration and sea-ice thickness for climate applications" (see the agenda).

NEWS from March 10 2017:

From now on we provide access to the ESA SICCI phase 2 sea-ice concentration data set based on AMSR-E (06-2002 through 09-2011) and AMSR2 (07-2012 through 12-2015).

From now on we do not offer the SSM/I based sea-ice concentration data set from phase 1. This will be super-seeded soon by the SMMR-SSM/I-SSMIS sea-ice concentration CDR from Eumetsat - OSI SAF OSI-450

Contribution of the EUMETSAT OSI SAF to the production of the SICCI SIC dataset is acknowledged. EUMETSAT OSI SAF provided access and allowed re-use of its SIC reprocessing software and data hosting facilities. The reprocessing chain was further updated with the new algorithms and knowledge from the ESA CCI Sea Ice project.

The data are free to use but we ask users to register themselves so that we know who is using the data. The registration form opens when clicking on the above links to the data.

A user workshop was held dedicated to presentation and discussion of the quality and usefulness of the phase 1 prototype products on September 18-19 2014 in Hamburg (see workshop report, pdf, not barrier free).

References

Primary data sets used for prototype production:

Last change: September 18, 2018

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