Summary

Description

This SeaWinds-on-QuikSCAT scatterometer-derived Arctic sea ice classification data set is provided as a service to the ocean and sea ice research communities on behalf of Dr. David Long at Brigham Young University (BYU) and the Scatterometer Climate Record Pathfinder (SCP). This data set provides nominal 4.45 km (pixel resolution) gridded fields of the classification of sea ice including First Year Ice, and Multi-Year Ice from SeaWinds on QuikSCAT scatterometer observations on a daily basis from 20 June 2002 through 31 December 2008. It is unique from other sea ice classification datasets primarily due to its utilization of passive microwave AMSR-E data to provide the initial ocean/ice masking edge and the use of a seasonal threshold for First-Year and Multi-Year sea ice classification from only SeaWinds data. The dataset is derived from daily gridded QuikSCAT vertically polarized (V-pol) egg backscatter data from the SCP, which is made available at the PO.DAAC: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/QUIKSCAT_BYU_L3_OW_SIGMA0_ENHANCED. A seasonally varying threshold was derived to discriminate between FY and MY sea ice based on QuikSCAT V-pol egg backscatter. The sea ice mask was derived by applying threshold constraints to the SCP AMSR-E 6 GHz images, which are made available by the BYU SCP: http://www.scp.byu.edu/data/AMSRE/SIR/AMSRE_sir.html. The data is provided in netCDF version 3 format. Further details on the algorithms and validation are described in further detail by Swan and Long (2012). For more information on the QuikSCAT platform and mission, please visit http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanWind/QuikSCAT.