Published March 28, 2021 | Version 3
Dataset Open

Monthly total freeboard and snow depth over Arctic sea ice from AMSR-E&2 and AVHRR measurements (2003-2020)

  • 1. Center for Environmental Technology, Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA; National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
  • 2. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 3. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation of China Meteorological Administration, School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
  • 4. Center for Environmental Technology, Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
  • 5. National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
  • 6. Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark

Description

[Data description]

Monthly total freeboard (Ft), snow depth (hs), and snow depth uncertainty over Arctic sea ice data for January-February-March months of the 2003-2020 period produced by Lee and Shi et al. (2021, manuscript under review) are provided.

Both variables are derived from satellite passive infrared and microwave measurements: Total freeboard was obtained from AMSR-E&2 measurements and snow depth was estimated from the AMSR and AVHRR measurements.

The uploaded file titled "monthly averaged total freeboard and snow depth (JFM 2003-2020).zip" contains two directories: one for total freeboard and the other for snow depth. Naming convention is "variable_yyyymm.bin" and data format is 32-bit floating point array in shape of 304 x 448 (25 km polar stereographic grid).

Here we provide an example Python code to read monthly snow depth of January 2003 using numpy.
  import numpy as np
  hs = np.fromfile('hs_200301.bin', dtype=np.float32).reshape(448,304)

Geocoordinate tools for the 25 km polar stereographic grid are available at NSIDC website (https://nsidc.org/data/polar-stereo/tools_geo_pixel.html)
 
[Abbreviations]

AMSR: Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer
AVHRR: Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Notes

Update for version 3: snow depth uncertainty is now included.

Files

monthly averaged total freeboard and snow depth (JFM 2003-2020) - v3.zip