This dataset provides gridded daily data of winter sea ice thickness for the Arctic region based on data fusion of CryoSat-2 and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS). It covers the complete sea ice area with daily updates and high sensitivity to the full sea ice thickness range due to the use of optimal interpolation of CryoSat-2 and SMOS source data.
Sea ice is an important component of our climate system and a sensitive indicator of climate change. Its presence or its retreat has a strong impact on air-sea interactions, the Earth’s energy budget as well as marine ecosystems. It is recognized by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) with sea ice thickness as one of the sea ice products.
The gap-less nature of the CS2SMOS data record makes it suitable for computing sea ice volume, a key indicator for analysing the mass balance of sea ice. The optimal interpolation process allows the analysis of sea ice volume changes on time scales of days, which is not feasible with the CryoSat-2 and SMOS source sea ice thickness information alone.
The main difference to the other (monthly) sea ice thickness climate data record (CDR) provided in the Climate Data Store and derived from radar altimeter data is the better accuracy of thin sea ice thickness from SMOS L-Band radiometry, the improved temporal resolution and the absence of gaps for the sea ice area. The CS2SMOS data coverage is also significantly shorter than sea ice thickness CDR and thus not yet suitable for analysing sea ice thickness trends on climate time scales.
This dataset is produced on behalf of the ESA SMOS & CryoSat-2 Sea Ice Data Product Processing and Dissemination Service and brokered to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) with adaptions to the file format and metadata.
Data description
Data type | Gridded |
|---|---|
Horizontal coverage | Northern Hemisphere |
Horizontal resolution | 25 km grid resolution (true spatial resolution: 1-10 km) |
Spatial gaps | Spatial gaps expected; no data in the vicinity of the North Pole |
Projection | Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (EASE-Grid version 2.0) centred over the North Pole |
Vertical coverage | Surface |
Vertical resolution | Single level |
Temporal coverage | November 2010 to present, only for Northern Hemisphere winter months (October 15 through April 15) |
Temporal resolution | 7 days |
Temporal gaps | From May to September |
Update frequency | Daily (with a 52-day latency) |
File format | NetCDF-4 |
Conventions | Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention v1.7, Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery (ACDD) v1.3 |
Versions | v1.0 (based on ESA CS2SMOS v2.04) |
Variables
Name | Units | Description |
|---|---|---|
Sea ice thickness | m | Mean thickness of the sea ice layer in the area of the grid cell covered by ice. Analysis field of the optimal interpolation of CryoSat-2 and SMOS sea ice thickness data. |
Related variables
Name | Units | Description |
|---|---|---|
Quality flag | Dimensionless | Quality flag for the sea ice thickness retrievals. It provides an expert guess on data quality based on the available data per grid cell. See the Product User Guide for details. |
Status flag | Dimensionless | Status flag detailing what filters, masks, or processing steps were applied to each pixel in the sea ice thickness retrievals. See the Product User Guide for details. |
Uncertainty | m | Analysis uncertainty of the optimal interpolation of CryoSat-2 and SMOS sea ice thickness data. |