High resolution data set of thin sea ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean

New and improved estimates of thin sea-ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean are derived from AMSR-E satellite for the period 2002-2011, at a spatial resolution of 6.25 km and using a newly developed fast-ice mask. The algorithm is based on comparisons between the polarization ratio (PR) of AMSR-E brightness temperatures from the 89 and 36 GHz channels (PR89 and PR36) and the thermal ice thickness. The thermal ice thickness is estimated from a heat budget calculation using the ice surface temperature from clear-sky Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) infrared data. Whereas coastal polynyas have been the main target of previous algorithms, this algorithm is also applicable for marginal ice zones. AMSR-E has twice the spatial resolution of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data and can therefore resolve polynyas at a smaller scale. Although the spatial resolution of the 89 GHz data (6.25 km) is twice that of the 36 GHz data (12.5 km), the 89 GHz data can be contaminated by atmospheric water vapor. We propose an exclusion method of data affected by water vapour to resolve this issue.