Overview of the Arctic SST/IST activities for the Copernicus Marine Service at DMI

Short abstract

Accurate estimates of sea surface (SST) and sea-ice surface temperatures (IST) are crucial for understanding, monitoring and predicting climate change in the Arctic. The Danish Meteorological Institute releases a suite of Pan-Arctic L3 and L4 products in Near-Real-Time and as Multi-Year datasets, as a Production Unit (PU) for the Copernicus Marine Monitoring Service Sea Ice (SI) Thematic Assembly Center (TAC).

Within this framework, the first gap-free (L4) combined SST and IST climate dataset of the Arctic (>58°N) for the period 1982-2021, has been released. Optimal interpolation was used to combine multiple infrared satellite observations to daily, gap-free fields with a spatial resolution of 0.05 degrees. The combination of SST and IST provides a consistent climate indicator which can be used to monitor day-to-day variations as well as climate trends in the Arctic Ocean; sea and sea-ice surface temperature increased about 4.5°C over the period 1982-2021, with the largest warming exceeding 10°C in the north-eastern Barents Sea.

The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of the existing suite of Copernicus Marine Service Pan-Arctic products for the SST and IST along with the improvements and new products planned for the new phase, including the new version of the L4 Multi-Year climate dataset and its associate Ocean Monitoring Indicators (OMI) which will be released by the end of 2022.