Abstract:
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument on the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua satellite provides global passive microwave measurements of land, ocean, and atmospheric variables for the investigation of water and energy cycles. This Level-3 gridded product (AE_SI25) includes brightness temperatures at 6.9 through 89.0 GHz and sea ice concentrations. Data are mapped to a polar stereographic grid at 25 km spatial resolution. All variables include daily ascending averages, daily descending averages, and daily averages. Data are stored in HDF-EOS format and are available from 19 June 2002 to present via FTP.
Latitude Resolution:
12.5 km
Longitude Resolution:
12.5 km
Horizontal Resolution Range:
10 km - < 50 km or approximately .09 degree - < .5 degree
Temporal Resolution:
Daily
Temporal Resolution Range:
Daily - < Weekly
Quality
Weather filters are employed for the Level-3 sea ice products to eliminate spurious sea ice concentrations over open ocean resulting from varying atmospheric emission. The weather filters are based on threshold values for the spectral gradient radio and thresholds derived from TB differences. Sea ice products are checked to see if ice concentration values fall within reasonable limits. Diagnostics are based in part on satellite sea ice climatology developed since the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) era in 1978.
