QuikSCAT SeaWinds Arctic daily sea ice extent and backscatter maps

The sea ice extent and normalized backscatter from the SeaWinds scatterometer on QuikSCAT result from the Bayesian discrimination of measured backscatter distances to prescribed ocean wind and sea ice geophysical model functions. The sea ice product contains the Bayesian sea ice probability and a proxy age of sea ice mapped onto 12.5 km polar stereographic grids. The sea ice extent is formed when the sea ice probability crosses a certain threshold, and the proxy age of sea ice is converted to (normalized HH and VV Ku-band) sea ice backscatter using the instructions detailed in the User Manual.