NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration, Version 2

The Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration Climate Data Record (CDR) dataset is generated using daily gridded brightness temperatures from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) series of Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) passive microwave radiometers onboard F-8, F-11 and F-13, and from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) data onboard F-17. The sea ice concentrations are an estimate of the fraction of ocean area covered by sea ice for both the north and south Polar Regions. The daily product is produced by combining concentration estimates created using two algorithms developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) that are processed and combined at NSIDC using brightness temperature data from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. (RSS). The data are gridded on the NSIDC polar stereographic grid with 25 x 25 km grid cells and are available in netCDF file format. The monthly averaged data have the same spatial resolution and format. Improvements since Version 1 include: 1) an extended data record from 2007 to present; 2) using SSMIS data from F-17; 3) a new snow melt variable; 4) netCDF metadata improvements; and 5) updated documentation and source code.