Helicopter-borne RGB orthomosaics and photogrammetric digital elevation models from the MOSAiC Expedition

• Published in: Scientific Data
• Main Authors: Niklas Neckel, Niels Fuchs, Gerit Birnbaum, Nils Hutter, Arttu Jutila, Lena Buth, Luisa von Albedyll, Robert Ricker, Christian Haas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2023
• Subjects: Science; Q; Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02318-5; https://doaj.org/article/27919870e0a146968d9308cd90ec17d2

Abstract The Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition took place between October 2019 and September 2020 giving the rare opportunity to monitor sea-ice properties over a full annual cycle. Here we present 24 high-resolution orthomosaics and 14 photogrammetric digital elevation models of the sea-ice surface around the icebreaker RV Polarstern between March and September 2020. The dataset is based on >34.000 images acquired by a helicopter-borne optical camera system with survey flights covering areas between 1.8 and 96.5 km2 around the vessel. Depending on the flight pattern and altitude of the helicopter, ground resolutions of the orthomosaics range between 0.03 and 0.5 m. By combining the photogrammetric products with contemporaneously acquired airborne laser scanner reflectance measurements selected orthomosaics could be corrected for cloud shadows which facilitates their usage for sea-ice and melt pond classification algorithms. The presented dataset is a valuable data source for the interdisciplinary MOSAiC community building a temporal and spatially resolved baseline to accompany various remote sensing and in situ research projects.