AMSR2 - Sea Ice Concentration

  1. Satellite Data Products
  2. Sea Ice
  3. AMSR2 - Sea Ice Concentration
Updated: February 11, 2021

AMSR_ice.png

Data are available through the following services:
Service Resource Locator
Near Real-Time Search Tool https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cw_html/NearRealTimeSearch.html?region=ALL&product=IceConcNOAA&sensor=ALL&daysback=1&desc=sat
ERDDAP https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/erddap/search/index.html?page=1&itemsPerPage=1000&searchFor=Ice+AMSR2

THREDDS

Aggregated and Per-file Views

 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/thredds/socd/coastwatch/catalog_amsr2_gw1_ice_conc_daily.html

THREDDS

Top Level Sea Ice Catalog

 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/thredds/socd/coastwatch/catalog_coastwatch_ice.html

Please acknowledge "NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch" when you use data from our site and cite the particular dataset DOI as appropriate.

AMSR_ice.png

NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Sea Ice Concentration, Level 3, daily and daily 4-day rolling merge, polar stereographic mapped composites -  AMSR-2

  • The second Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2) on JAXA's Global Climate Observation Mission - Water 1 (GCOM-W1)
  • Daily composites and daily 4-day rolling merge composites
  • 10 km spatial resolution
  • Polar Stereographic projections for North Pole and South Pole 
  • Microwave not impacted by clouds
  • Source data from NOAA OSPO; NOGAPS algortihm developed by NOAA STAR (Paul Chang, Lead)

 

 

KeyDescription
Platform/Sensor

Global Change Obervation Mission - Water (GCOM-W1)

The second Advance Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-2)

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Measurement/Products

Sea Ice Concentration (% of Sea Ice per pixel)
Sample Filename

GWXCW_W2019203_C15_002140_020039_033940_051540_065439_083040_100940_114840_132440_150341_164242_182143_200342_214543_224240_NP06_IceConc.nc

Where:

  • GWXCW is
  • W2019203 is W year and day of year:  WYYYYdoy
  • C15 indicates number of granules in composite (generally 14 or 15)
  • Series of 6 digit numbers are start times each granule included in the composite
  • NP06 (or SP06) indicates mapped to Polar Stereographic Projection for North Pole (NP06) or South Pole (SP06) 
  • Ice Conc is product name = Ice Concentration
  • .nc is NetCDF format (CF compliant)
Processing Level

Level 3
Spatial Coverage

Polar Stereographic projection, origin at 90 degrees to 60 degree parallel (North or South)
Temporal Coverage

Daily and

Daily 4-day rolling merge
Latency

Approximately 12 to 24 hours
Resolution

10 km
Projection

Polar Stereographic
Orbit

Polar-orbiting
Data Provider

NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO) uses the GCOM-W1 AMSR-2 Algorithm Software Processor (GAASP) which takes the full orbital JAXA L1B data via NASA, applies brightness temperature bias corrections, assigns an RFI flag, performs internal reformatting, and then generates L2 products from the NOAA Operational GCOM-W1 AMSR-2 Products System Algorithm (NOGAPS).  NOAA CoastWatch obtains L2 from OSPO and generates L3 daily merged (composite) and maps to polar stereographic projection for routine distribution.
Formats

NetCDF (Climate and Forecast Convention Compliant; CF 1.4)
Keywords

polar stereographic, GCOM-W1, AMSR-2, Sea Ice Concentration, JAXA
Keywords (Beta)
polar stereographic
GCOM-W1
AMSR-2
Sea Ice Concentration
JAXA
Documentation: 

STAR Development (Paul Chang, Lead)

https://manati.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/gcom

OSPO Monitoring and Documentation

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/atmosphere/gpds/algo.html