Arctic Sea Ice Seasonal Change and Melt/Freeze Climate Indicators from Satellite Data, Version 1

The product contains melt-season indicators that can be used to delineate various stages in the summer melt and freeze-up period of sea ice. The data were primarily derived using Sea Ice Concentration (SIC) observations from the NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration and brightness temperature observations from the DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Daily Polar Gridded Brightness Temperatures; both input data sets are archived at NSIDC. The main parameters for this data set include the dates of melt onset, early melt onset, and continuous melt onset; dates of early and continuous freeze onset; day of opening (last day SIC is above 80%); day of retreat (last day SIC drops below 15%); day of advance (first day SIC increases above 15%); day of closing (first day SIC increases above 80%); total outer ice-free period; total inner ice-free period; seasonal loss-of-ice period; seasonal gain-of-ice period; and the seasonal ice zone.

These data are available for 1979 through 2017. They are gridded on the NSIDC northern hemisphere polar stereographic grid at 25 km.