Blended VIIRS and AMSR2 Sea Ice Concentration

This work aims at improving Sea Ice Concentration (SIC). This is a new and experimental product that gives SIC under all-weather conditions through optimal blending of high spatial resolution VIIRS ice concentration with ice concentration from passive microwave observation from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2).

Validation of VIIRS and passive microwave-derived SIC has been done using high-resolution Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Bias and RMSE of SICs form VIIRS and AMSR2 are calculated with regard to SIC from Landsat. After both VIIRS and AMSR2 images are remapped into 1-KM EASE-Grid, the validation statistics are applied to the Best Linear Unbiased Estimator (BLUE) to derive the final ice concentration under clear sky conditions.

It has been discovered that the higher resolution VIIRS data provides beneficial information to improve upon Microwave (AMSR2) SIC under clear sky conditions, especially during the summer melt season.