CIMSS Scientists who work with JPSS data had numerous presentations at the American Meteorological Society’s Annual Meeting held at the end of January in Baltimore. This blog post discusses a poster by Tom Greenwald who (along with co-authors) investigated how microwave data from AMSR-2 can be used to estimate sea ice concentration in regions where very high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data are not present. The AMSR-2 images were validated using very high-resolution Landsat visible imagery; that is, this was done in regions of clear skies to show that the microwave data would be producing useful information in regions of clouds. The high-resolution AMSR-2 Sea Ice Concentration data are used, as the poster notes, to “track the ice edge and marginal ice zone (MIZ) with a degree of confidence not achieved with the standard AMSR2 sea ice concentration.”

A dedicated CIMSS Satellite Blog reader might recall past blog posts that also discussed this technique, here and here. AMSR-2 gives high-resolution, quality sea ice detection to augment SAR observations. Future work includes a more thorough comparison between this product and legacy products. A Quick Guide on this product is available here.

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