First results of Antarctic sea ice type retrieval from  active and passive microwave remote sensing data

Melsheimer, Christian; Spreen, Gunnar; Ye, Yufang; Shokr, Mohammed

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-105-2023

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-105-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-105-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

12 Jan 2023

Research article |

| 12 Jan 2023

First results of Antarctic sea ice type retrieval from active and passive microwave remote sensing data

Christian Melsheimer, Gunnar Spreen, Yufang Ye, and Mohammed Shokr

Data sets

Uncorrected Ice Type Concentrations (young ice, first-year ice, multiyear ice), Antarctic, 12.5 km grid, 2013-2012 (from satellite) C. Melsheimer and G. Spreen https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/MultiYearIce/ascat-amsr2/raw/

Multiyear Ice Concentration, Antarctic, 12.5 km grid, cold seasons 2013-2018 (from satellite) C. Melsheimer, G. Spreen, Y. Ye, and M. Shokr https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.909054

Short summary

It is necessary to know the type of Antarctic sea ice present – first-year ice (grown in one season) or multiyear ice (survived one summer melt) – to understand and model its evolution, as the ice types behave and react differently. We have adapted and extended an existing method (originally for the Arctic), and now, for the first time, daily maps of Antarctic sea ice types can be derived from microwave satellite data. This will allow a new data set from 2002 well into the future to be built.