sic_cdr_swaths.png (193.3 kB)
sic_cdr_swaths.png
An "artist view" of sea ice remote sensing at work.
The image shows the southern oceans with sea ice concentration (blue: ocean - white: sea ice) on September 25th 2015. The sea ice concentration is from the EUMETSAT OSISAF global sea ice concentration climate data record (dx.doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0008).
On top of that sea ice field, two satellite swaths are overlaid, one from the SSMIS instrument on board US DMSP F18 satellite, the other from the AMSR2 instrument on board the JAXA GCOM-W1 satellite. Labels in the plot area indicate the sensing time for each swath. The "jet" colormap (from blue to red) is used for the swath sea ice concentration data.
The image illustrates the finer resolution achieved by the AMSR2 instrument (Weddell Sea) with respect to that allowed by SSMIS (Amundsen Sea).
The EUMETSAT OSI SAF CDR (dx.doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0008) covers 1979-2015 and uses SMMR, SSM/I, and SSMIS data. The ESA CCI Sea Ice CDRs (dx.doi.org/10.5285/c61bfe88-873b-44d8-9b0e-6a0ee884ad95) covers 2002-2015 with AMSR-E and AMSR2 data.
