NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave 12.5 km Sea Ice Concentration, Version 5

Go to Version 4 (Stable Release)

Notice: This is a beta release of the SIC CDR Version 5 12.5 km product. The data set has not been thoroughly validated so there may be some inaccuracies, especially in the older portion of the record that uses the SMMR, SSM/I, and SSMIS sensors. Data from these sensors were regridded from their original 25 km grid size to the new 12.5 km grid to match the resolution of the AMSR series. Some discontinuities exist at the sensor transitions that still require adjustments and bias corrections. We encourage users to explore the product and provide feedback for any errors they may find to [e-mail].

NSIDC recommends continuing to use Version 4 (https://nsidc.org/data/g02202/versions/4) for analyses. If you decide to use Version 5, do so with caution until NSIDC has finished validating the product. Once validation is complete, the beta release designation will be removed. Any issues found will be fixed, and the data set will be formally released. If you would like to be notified when validation of Version 5 is complete and you are not already a registered user of the Version 4 product, you can subscribe to announcements by clicking the SUBSCRIBE button above.

This data set provides a Climate Data Record (CDR) of sea ice concentration from passive microwave data. The CDR algorithm output is a rule-based combination of ice concentration estimates from two well-established algorithms: the NASA Team (NT) algorithm (Cavalieri et al. 1984) and NASA Bootstrap (BT) algorithm (Comiso 1986). The CDR is a consistent, daily and monthly time series of sea ice concentrations from 25 October 1978 through the most recent processing for both the north and south polar regions. All data are on a 12.5 km x 12.5 km grid.