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Comparisons of passive microwave remote sensing sea ice concentrations with ship-based visual observations during the CHINARE Arctic summer cruises of 2010–2018

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Abstract

In order to apply satellite data to guiding navigation in the Arctic more effectively, the sea ice concentrations (SIC) derived from passive microwave (PM) products were compared with ship-based visual observations (OBS) collected during the Chinese National Arctic Research Expeditions (CHINARE). A total of 3 667 observations were collected in the Arctic summers of 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. PM SIC were derived from the NASA-Team (NT), Bootstrap (BT) and Climate Data Record (CDR) algorithms based on the SSMIS sensor, as well as the BT, enhanced NASA-Team (NT2) and ARTIST Sea Ice (ASI) algorithms based on AMSR-E/AMSR-2 sensors. The daily arithmetic average of PM SIC values and the daily weighted average of OBS SIC values were used for the comparisons. The correlation coefficients (CC), biases and root mean square deviations (RMSD) between PM SIC and OBS SIC were compared in terms of the overall trend, and under mild/normal/severe ice conditions. Using the OBS data, the influences of floe size and ice thickness on the SIC retrieval of different PM products were evaluated by calculating the daily weighted average of floe size code and ice thickness. Our results show that CC values range from 0.89 (AMSR-E/AMSR-2 NT2) to 0.95 (SSMIS NT), biases range from −3.96% (SSMIS NT) to 12.05% (AMSR-E/AMSR-2 NT2), and RMSD values range from 10.81% (SSMIS NT) to 20.15% (AMSR-E/AMSR-2 NT2). Floe size has a significant influence on the SIC retrievals of the PM products, and most of the PM products tend to underestimate SIC under smaller floe size conditions and overestimate SIC under larger floe size conditions. Ice thickness thicker than 30 cm does not have a significant influence on the SIC retrieval of PM products. Overall, the best (worst) agreement occurs between OBS SIC and SSMIS NT (AMSR-E/AMSR-2 NT2) SIC in the Arctic summer.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the previous CHINARE crew and science teams for their support and their hard and meticulous work. We extend our thanks to the NSIDC and University of Bremen for providing the PM SIC products.

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Correspondence to Peng Lu.

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The National Major Research High Resolution Sea Ice Model Development Program of China under contract No. 2018YFA0605903; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 51639003, 41876213 and 41906198; the Hightech Ship Research Project of China under contract No. 350631009; the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talent of China under contract No. BX20190051.

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Xiu, Y., Li, Z., Lei, R. et al. Comparisons of passive microwave remote sensing sea ice concentrations with ship-based visual observations during the CHINARE Arctic summer cruises of 2010–2018. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 39, 38–49 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-020-1646-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-020-1646-5

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