Assimilation of SSMIS and ASCAT data and the replacement of highly uncertain estimates in the Environment Canada Regional Ice Prediction System

• Published in: Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society
• Main Authors: Buehner, M., Caya, A., Carrieres, T., Pogson, L.
• Other Authors: Natural Resources Canada Program on Energy Research and Development through the Sea Ice and Ice Hazard Analyses and Forecasts project, Canadian Space Agency Government Related Initiatives Program (GRIP), Government of Canada Metareas project
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2014
• Subjects: Canada; Greenland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/qj.2408; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fqj.2408; https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/qj.2408

Abstract This study describes the impact from three major modifications to an existing ice‐analysis system developed at Environment Canada. The analysis component of the Regional Ice Prediction System currently provides near real‐time gridded estimates of ice concentration for all ice‐affected areas around North America and Greenland, and is primarily aimed to satisfy the operational requirements of the Canadian Ice Service. The first modification is the assimilation of Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder data from three satellite platforms to complement the already assimilated Special Sensor Microwave Imager data from one platform. The second change is the assimilation of ice‐concentration information derived from Advanced Scatterometer data. The third modification is to replace the ice concentration in the analysis with spatially interpolated values for all grid points where an estimated measure of uncertainty is above a specified threshold. Objective verification scores were computed from 1 year experiments spanning all of 2010 using independent verification data to evaluate the accuracy of the analyses. The incremental impact of adding each of the three modifications is examined along with the combined impact from the three modifications. It is demonstrated that the new version of the system produces consistently more accurate ice‐concentration analyses than the previous version, especially during the summer period and when the ice is refreezing.