Combined SMOS and SMAP Arctic Sea Ice Thickness, 2015-2018

Arctic sea ice thicknesses derived from combined L-band passive microwave brightness temperatures from the SMOS and SMAP satellites. The dataset covers the freeze-up periods from 1 April 2015 to 15 April 2015 and the winter seasons from 2015/16 to 2017/18. It was produced by researchers at Universität Hamburg using an algorithm described in Tian-Kunze et al. (2014).

Use Cases

• Modeling thin sea ice growth and decay based on derived thickness values.
• Assessing satellite retrieval algorithm performance for ice thickness using the provided uncertainty intervals.
• Analyzing seasonal and interannual variability of Arctic sea ice using the multi-year time series.
• Calibrating or validating other sea ice thickness measurement methods based on the L-band brightness temperature data.

Strengths

• Derived from a homogenized combination of two satellite missions (SMOS and SMAP), likely improving spatial and temporal coverage.
• Includes explicit uncertainty estimates (upper and lower limits) for the thickness values.
• Provides a specific saturation ratio field to flag data where retrievals are less reliable for thick ice.

Limitations

• The description notes thickness retrievals saturate for ice above 0.5m to 1m, limiting accuracy for thick ice.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation beyond the listed field names is absent; detailed semantics require consulting the referenced PDF.

Provenance

Source

Universität Hamburg

Collection Method

Derived from combined SMOS and SMAP satellite brightness temperatures using a published algorithm.

Time Range

1 April 2015 to 15 April 2015, and winter seasons 2015/16 to 2017/18

Geography

Arctic