A 41-year (1979–2019) passive-microwave-derived lake ice phenology data record of the Northern Hemisphere

Seasonal ice cover is one of the important attributes of lakes in middle- and high-latitude regions. The annual freeze-up and breakup dates as well as the duration of ice cover (i.e., lake ice phenology) are sensitive to the weather and climate; hence, they can be used as an indicator of climate var...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth System Science Data
Main Authors: Cai, Yu, Duguay, Claude R., Ke, Chang-Qing
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-3329-2022
https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00061902
https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00061270/essd-14-3329-2022.pdf
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/3329/2022/essd-14-3329-2022.pdf
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Summary:Seasonal ice cover is one of the important attributes of lakes in middle- and high-latitude regions. The annual freeze-up and breakup dates as well as the duration of ice cover (i.e., lake ice phenology) are sensitive to the weather and climate; hence, they can be used as an indicator of climate variability and change. In addition to optical, active microwave, and raw passive microwave data that can provide daily observations, the Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Brightness Temperature (CETB) dataset available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) provides an alternate source of passive microwave brightness temperature (TB) measurements for the determination of lake ice phenology on a 3.125 km grid. This study used Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I), and Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) data from the CETB dataset to extract the ice phenology for 56 lakes across the Northern Hemisphere from 1979 to 2019. According to the differences in TB between lake ice and open water, a threshold algorithm based on the moving t test method was applied to determine the lake ice status for grids located at least 6.25 km away from the lake shore, and the ice phenology dates for each lake were then extracted. When ice phenology could be extracted from more than one satellite over overlapping periods, results from the satellite offering the largest number of observations were prioritized. The lake ice phenology results showed strong agreement with an existing product derived from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) data (2002 to 2015), with mean absolute errors of ice dates ranging from 2 to 4 d. Compared with near-shore in situ observations, the lake ice results, while different in terms of spatial coverage, still showed overall consistency. The produced lake ice record also displayed significant consistency when compared to a historical record of annual ...