Discrimination of sea ice edge in the Antarctic, from NOAA MSU

• Main Authors: Takashi Yamanouchi, Yoichi Seo
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: National Institute of Polar Research/University of Electro-Communications 1984
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Memoirs of National Institute of Polar Research; Polar Research; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=1686; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00001686/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=1686&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

Discrimination of the sea ice edge is done using the microwave 50.3 GHz brightness temperature measured by NOAA satellites. Considering the emissivity variation between the open sea and sea ice, the contour of 232K brightness temperature is regarded as the ice edge. The method is very simple but contains several sources of uncertainty owing to the atmospheric effect and low resolution. Limits and possibilities of the method are discussed. Horizontal distributions of sea ice are compared to the AVHRR imagery and good agreement is found. An annual variation of sea ice distribution is presented.