A new sea ice concentration product in the polar regions derived from the FengYun-3 MWRI sensors

• Main Authors: Chen, Ying, Zhao, Xi, Lei, Ruibo, Wu, Shengli, Liu, Yue, Fan, Pei, Ji, Qing, Zhang, Peng, Pang, Xiaoping
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2022-186; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2022-186/

Sea ice concentration (SIC) is the main variable for quantifying the sea ice change in the polar regions. Continuous SIC data is very important for the studies of climate and polar marine environments. This study generates a new SIC product covering the Arctic and Antarctic from November 2010 to December 2019. It is the first long-term SIC product derived from the Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI) sensors onboard the Chinese FengYun-3B, -3C, and -3D satellites, after a recent re-calibration of brightness temperature. We also modified the preliminary dynamic tie points Arctic Radiation and Turbulence Interaction Study Sea Ice (ASI) algorithm mainly through input TB and initial tie points. The MWRI-ASI SIC was compared to the existing ASI SIC products and validated using ship-based SIC observations. Results show that the MWRI-ASI SIC mostly coincides with the ASI SIC obtained from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager series sensors, with overall biases of -1.4 ± 1.8 % in the Arctic and 0.5 ± 2.2 % in the Antarctic, respectively. The overall mean absolute deviation between the MWRI-ASI SIC and ship-based SIC is 16.1 % and 17.1 % in the Arctic and Antarctic, respectively, which is close to the existing ASI SIC products. The trend of sea ice extent (SIE) derived from MWRI-ASI SIC closely agrees with those of the Sea Ice Index SIEs provided by OSI-SAF and NSIDC. Therefore, the MWRI-ASI SIC is comparable with other SIC products and is qualified to be integrated into long-term sea ice records. The MWRI-ASI SIC dataset is available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.945188 (Chen et al., 2022).