Experience with Near Real Time Distributiom of Envisat Asar Data to End-Users

• Main Authors: Pedersen, Leif Toudal, Saldo, Roberto
• Format: Other Non-Article Part of Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ESA Publications Division 2005
• Subjects: Asar; polar night; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/3c0817e3-6661-446d-8047-c9b1360880ac; http://server.oersted.dtu.dk/publications/views/publication_details.php?id=1569

For a number of years Ørsted·DTU has delivered seaice information to ships navigating in some of the most remote areas of the Earth. Both the Northern and the Southern hemisphere contain vast areas not regularly charted by the governmental sea ice agencies. DTU utilizes free of charge images from European and American satellites to fill out these white areas in the operational ice charts. Data are gathered through the Internet, processed in order to enhance and quantify the ice information, and re-distributed through the Internet within a few hours after acquisition by the satellite. Most of the images used by DTU are recorded by microwave instruments, due to the ability of microwaves to penetrate the polar night as well as the often persistent cloud cover in these regions. For the last 4 months we have used our system for processing and distribution of ENVISAT Global Monitoring Mode (GMM) images and in that time more than 1500 images have been viewed by our users. We are currently developing value added products from the GMM data such as 1-day and 3-day mosaics, ice drift fields etc. (Figures 1, 2 & 7). The DTU system is free and can be accessed at http://www.seaice.dk