Sea Ice Images - Second Set - Now Available
Daily Arctic Sea Ice Concentrations and Daily Arctic Sea Ice Extent
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Google Earth Animations
To view the new animations, please go to:
http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has released a second set
of sea ice animations for Google Earth. As before the images are
available in 30- 60- and 90-day animations of sea ice concentration and
extent.
While the first set of animations, released in late August, are based on
data from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) on the Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F13 satellite, the new set is
based on data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth
Observing System (AMSR-E) sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. The
significant differences between the two datasets are: AMSR-E has twice
the resolution as SSM/I (12.5km vs 25km) and AMSR-E has a wider swath so
there is better coverage near the pole.
Monthly average sea ice extents are also shown to give an indication of
how current conditions compare with more typical conditions.
The daily updates are automatically loaded into Google Earth at startup
so users always have the most recent images. Users with limited memory
or bandwidth may want to choose a shorter time series.
The new animations, as well as the first series, are available from the
virtual globes home page: http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/
For more information on Arctic sea ice and this year's melt season, see
"Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis" at NSIDC:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
For more information on the Near Real-Time SSM/I EASE-Grid Daily Global
Ice Concentration and Snow Extent (NISE) product, see the catalog page:
http://nsidc.org/data/nise1.html
For more information on AMSR-E data at NSIDC, see the home page:
http://nsidc.org/data/amsre/
These animations use the time slider in Google Earth to animate the
images. For information on how to use the time slider, see the tutorial
at: http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/timelines.html