Data Products  › Product & Algorithm › Caveats of Sea Ice Concentration product
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Caveats for the standard products

Caveats of Sea Ice Concentration product

Algorithm development PI : Dr. Josefino C. Comiso
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

This document briefly describes some caveats for the AMSR Level 2 standard products of sea ice concentration.
Retrieval areas
This product retrieves sea ice concentration over global oceans above 30 degree in north and south latitude. Land areas are masked out by using land-ocean flag information, 25km grid data, provided by algorithm development PI. In addition, sea ice concentration is not retrieved in regions where the sea surface temperatures are above 5 degree of Celsius provided by JAXA. Sea ice concentrations may be retrieved along the coastline because of the accuracy of latitude/longitude position data in L1B data or the effect of antenna side lobe.

Retrieval range and error
Range of sea ice concentration retrieval is between 0 and 100 percent. Retrieval error was estimated within approximately 13.2%(RMS) by comparing to sea ice concentration data provided by TERRA/MODIS and Aqua/MODIS 250m channel. The comparison was made using the data of April and July 2003 (1-month data for each). The comparison was made using the data of February 11, 2003 in the Sea of Okhotsk.