Abstract:
The short name for this product is Ice Cover Statistics. The dataset
was prepared by Dr. Peter Romanov at Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies
(CICS) of the University of Maryland for the NASA NEESPI Data and Service
Center.
The product includes the monthly ice statistics
... (frequency of occurrence)
and the ice occurrence climatology for Northern Hemisphere at 1 degree
spatial resolution. The dataset covers the time period starting January 2000.
Currently the last month processed is May 2006.
Monthly ice maps and climatology were derived from daily ice cover
charts produced at NOAA/NESDIS within Interactive Multisensor Ice
Mapping System (IMS). IMS ice charts are generated on a 1024x1024 grid in
polar projection at a nominal resolution of about 24 km (see
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SNOW/index.html) The monthly frequency of
occurrence of ice is calculated by aggregating daily snow and ice data
in 1 x 1 degree grid cell. The monthly climatology is obtained through
averaging monthly data for individual years.
Data files are flat binary with 360 pixels per line and 90 lines. The
projection is latitude-longitude with the upper left corner of the first pixel
of the first line positioned at 90N 180W. The size of each file is 0.126MB.
The file naming convention is as follows:
ims_ice_stat_mm_yyyy is the monthly snow cover statistics where "mm" is a
two digit month number, and "yyyy" is a four-digit year
ims_ice_clim_mm is the monthly average where "mm" is a two-digit
month number.
The meaning of byte values is as follows:
0 : snow free land surface
1-100 : snow frequency of occurrence in percent
120 : ice free sea surface
121-220: sea ice frequency of occurrence in percent
Information on the NESDIS Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System
is available at http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SNOW/ims.html 
