MODIS sea ice leads detections using a U-Net

Sea ice leads are long and narrow sea ice fractures.
Despite accounting for a small fraction of the Arctic surface
area, leads play a critical role in the energy flux between the ocean and
atmosphere. As the volume of sea ice in the Arctic has declined
over recent decades, it is increasingly important to monitor the
corresponding changes in sea ice leads. An approach described in
Hoffman et al. 2021 uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect sea ice
leads using satellite thermal infrared window data from the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The AI used to detect sea
ice leads in satellite imagery is a particular kind of
convolutional neural network, a U-Net. The originally published dataset
included only a small case study of results. Here, the dataset is expanded
to include the daily detection of leads since 2002 for the season between
November through April.