Annual melt onset, duration and end dates for the Antarctic Peninsula derived from Quikscat and ASCAT scatterometer Enhanced Resolution data, 1999-2017

• Main Authors: Bevan, Suzanne, Luckman, Adrian
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK 2018
• Subjects: "EARTH SCIENCE","CRYOSPHERE","GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS","GLACIER MASS BALANCE/ICE SHEET MASS BALANCE"; "EARTH SCIENCE","SNOW/ICE","ICE GROWTH/MELT"; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Austral; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/e3616d28-759e-4cca-8fae-fe398f9552ba; https://data.bas.ac.uk/full-record.php?id=GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01014

Surface melt onset, duration and end date for the Antarctic Peninsula from 1999/2000 to 2016/2017 at a spatial resolution of 2 km, derived from scatterometer data. Years 1999/2000 to 2008/09 are based on QSCAT data and 2009/10 to 2016/17 on ASCAT data. : Melt was not defined if the winter mean backscatter was greater than -10 dB to avoid calculating melt over noisy backscatter regions such as the Peninsula mountains. ASCAT input data were only available until 21/06/2017 but we assume that this allows all melt within austral year 2016/17 to have been detected. 2 km horizontal resolution based on over sampling of 4.5 km scatterometer data. Enhanced Resolution scatterometer data were downloaded from the BYU Center for Remote Sensing ftp site (ftp.scp.byu.edu/pub/data/). We used the 'qmsv' QSCAT product (morning, slice, vertically polarizied) and the 'msfa' ASCAT product (all pass, vertically polarized, slice equivalent). The data were processed to identify annual melt onset, duration, and end dates. A melt day is defined when backscatter falls below the previous winter (June, July, August) mean by more than 3 dB (QSCAT), or 2.7 dB (ASCAT). Three consecutive days of melt or refreeze are required to define melt onset or end, respectively. Austral year begins August 1st and onset and end day numbers are relative to this date. Years 1999/2000 to 2008/09 are based on QSCAT data and 2009/10-2016/17 on ASCAT data.