A study of multiyear ice concentration retrieval algorithms using AMSR-E data

Abstract

In recent years, the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice area (SIA) and sea ice extent (SIE), especially for the multiyear (MY) ice, has led to significant effect on climate change. The accurate retrieval of MY ice concentration retrieval is very important and challenging to understand the ongoing changes. Three MY ice concentration retrieval algorithms were systematically evaluated. A similar total ice concentration was yielded by these algorithms, while the retrieved MY sea ice concentrations differs from each other. The MY SIA derived from NASA TEAM algorithm is relatively stable. Other two algorithms created seasonal fluctuations of MY SIA, particularly in autumn and winter. In this paper, we proposed an ice concentration retrieval algorithm, which developed the NASA TEAM algorithm by adding to use AMSR-E 6.9 GHz brightness temperature data and sea ice concentration using 89.0 GHz data. Comparison with the reference MY SIA from reference MY ice, indicates that the mean difference and root mean square (rms) difference of MY SIA derived from the algorithm of this study are 0.65×106 km2 and 0.69×106 km2 during January to March,–0.06×106 km2 and 0.14×106 km2 during September to December respectively. Comparison with MY SIE obtained from weekly ice age data provided by University of Colorado show that, the mean difference and rms difference are 0.69×106 km2 and 0.84×106 km2, respectively. The developed algorithm proposed in this study has smaller difference compared with the reference MY ice and MY SIE from ice age data than the Wang’s, Lomax’ and NASA TEAM algorithms.