This report contains a summary of information on the Cryo-TEMPO (Baseline-C v001) Sea Ice products for Feb 2024. For detailed information and statistics on all parameters, please use the product viewer.
This section shows the availability of Cryo-TEMPO Sea Ice products during Feb 2024.
As each orbit may be split in to several Cryo-TEMPO files, the number of files and orbits may be different.
| Product Area | Number of Orbits | Number of Files |
|---|---|---|
| Arctic | 421 | 924 |
The primary parameter measured for sea ice is sea ice freeboard. This section shows sea ice freeboard statistics for Feb 2024.
| Area | Number of Measurements | Mean (m) | Median | Min:Max | Stdev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arctic | 3969711 | 0.13 | 0.13 | -0.25:2.25 | 0.13 |
Maps of sea ice and radar freeboard measurements over the Arctic for Feb 2024 are displayed below.
The estimated uncertainty of each sea ice freeboard measurement is provided in the sea_ice_freeboard_uncertainty parameter.
The accuracy of sea ice freeboard is determined by the accuracy of the radar freeboard measurement by CryoSat-2 and the limited accuracy of climatological snow depth data used for the radar freeboard to sea ice freeboard conversion.
Aircraft observations that include both sea ice freeboard and snow depth are used to assess sea ice freeboard accuracy where data is available. An initial validation exercise used NASA Operation IceBridge (OIB) from spring 2014 as reference data:
| Bias | Root Mean Square error (uncertainty) | |
|---|---|---|
| Radar Freeboard | <0.01m | 0.13m |
| Sea Ice Freeboard | <0.06m | 0.10m |
| Snow Depth | <0.10m | 0.11m |
The comparison was based on a spatial scale of 25 km. The accuracy of freeboards from individual waveforms will be lower. This analysis will be updated for the full validation data record.
The thematic sea ice product is currently not available between May and September. During these months wet snow and open melt ponds prevent accurate estimation of sea ice freeboard with the current algorithm.
The estimation of sea ice freeboard during winter time depends on snow depth and density as input parameter. There are currently based on values from a climatology, which does not reflect the true spatial and interannual variability of the snow cover on sea ice. User with access to time-varying snow information are advised to use radar freeboard as this parameter does not include corrections based on the snow climatology and apply the corrections themselves.
Only freeboard measurements over the Arctic are included in this Cryo-TEMPO product release. The properties of the sea ice around Antarctica make freeboard measurement more challenging from radar altimeters and is an area of active research. Antarctic sea ice tends to be thinner than Arctic sea ice with heavy snow loading, flooded and refrozen snow. This can push the sea ice below the ocean surface resulting in negative freeboard as well as frequent radar backscatter from within the snow layer.
The Cryo-TEMPO products for Feb 2024 are processed from original lower level ESA CS2 L1b Baseline-E products.
For more information on applicable ESA CS2 L1b products, users may wish to consult the CS2 Baseline-E Evolutions document from ESA.
Report by the Cryo-TEMPO science team, created by MSSL (UCL) on 19/05/2024