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

This data set provides a Climate Data Record (CDR) of sea ice concentration from passive microwave data at a 25 km resolution beginning in late October 1978. It is generated using daily gridded brightness temperatures from the GCOM-W Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - 2 (AMSR2), the Aqua AMSR-E sensor, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) series of Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) passive microwave radiometers onboard F-17, F-13, F-11, and F-8, and the Nimbus Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR). The sea ice concentrations are an estimate of the fraction of ocean area covered by sea ice for both the north and south Polar Regions.

The data are provided at daily and monthly resolutions from late October 1978 through most recent processing in NetCDF-4 CF 1.10 format. The data cover the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

The related Near-real-time (NRT) NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration is not included in this data submission to NCEI. The daily NRT product is considered to be preliminary data and hosted at NSIDC. The quarterly data submissions to NCEI consist of Final data only.