ESA-CCI_Phase2_Standardized_Manual_Visual_Ship-Based_SeaIceObservations_v02

• Main Author: Kern, Stefan
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) at DKRZ 2020
• Subjects: Climate; ESA-SICCI_SHIPBASED_SEAICEOBS; sea ice; Arctic; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Climate change; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.26050/wdcc/esaccipsmvsbsiov2; http://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/Compact.jsp?acronym=ESACCIPSMVSBSIOV2

Project: ESA-CCI sea-ice-ecv project phase 2 bi-polar standardized manual visual ship-based sea-ice observations - The European Space Agency - Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) sea-ice Essential Climate Variable (ECV) project, phase 2, (ESA-SICCI2) ran from 2015 through 2018 (see http://esa-cci.nersc.no/). The main aim of phase 2 of the ESA-SICCI project was to further enhance development, production and evaluation of satellite-based sea ice ECV data sets, namely of sea-ice concentration and sea-ice thickness. One element of the evaluation of the ECVs produced was the comparison of the sea-ice ECV data sets with manual, visual ship-based observations of the sea-ice cover. For this purpose, within ESA SICCI phase 2, a standardized data set of such observations was created for both polar regions covering the period June 2002 through December 2015. These observations comprise visual, i.e. by human eye, regularly and manually conducted observations of the total sea-ice concentration and various other sea-ice parameters of the three thickest sea-ice types within a radius of one kilometer around the ship while the ship cruises through polar waters. Summary: The data set incorporates observational data from various collections, e.g. a part of the original ASPeCt collection [Worby et al., 2008], which ended in May 2005. More information about all data sources is given in the global attributes of the netCDF files and in two separate reference lists. All data have been manually standardized to the same format (i.e., number of decimals, unit), using the same value to describe missing data, using the same temporal ordering, and filling gaps with the respective missing-data value. Double data entries have been removed. Dubious / obviously wrong entries have been set to missing values. The data set is available as two separate netCDF files, one for the Arctic, one for the Antarctic. It is additionally available as two separate ascii-text files under https://icdc.cen.uni-hamburg.de/en/seaiceparameter-shipobs.html , where the netCDF files are available as well. The data set has been successfully used to evaluate sea-ice concentration and thickness products of the ESA-SICCI phase 2 project.