Arctic Sea Ice Kinematics and Properties from RADARSAT-1

October 1996 through May 2008 data from the RADARSAT-1 satellite tracks sea ice motion and properties over the Arctic Ocean. The NASA MEaSUREs program produced four monthly products: ice motion, deformation, age/thickness, and radar backscatter, derived by tracking a 10km grid at 3-day intervals across winter and summer seasons.

Use Cases

• Model ice drift and advection patterns using the tracked grid point locations and timestamps from the Ice Motion product.
• Analyze stress responses from wind and ocean currents by calculating divergence, vorticity, and shear from the Deformation product's cell kinematics.
• Estimate ice volume and age distribution by tracking the area, age, and thickness of new and ridged ice created from cell area changes.
• Classify ice types, such as multi-year ice fraction, using the histogram of radar brightness values from the Backscatter product.

Strengths

• Provides over 11 years of continuous temporal coverage from October 1996 to May 2008.
• Includes four distinct, derived geophysical products (motion, deformation, age/thickness, backscatter) from a consistent 10km grid methodology.
• Data is sourced from the dedicated RADARSAT Geophysical Processing System (RGPS) under the NASA MEaSUREs program.

Limitations

• Primary data collection ended in May 2008, making the dataset temporally stale for analyzing recent Arctic conditions.
• A small fraction of tracked grid points may be lost per season due to advection, ice loss, or untrackability, introducing potential data gaps.
• Spatial resolution is constrained to a 10km by 10km grid, which may not capture very small-scale ice features.

Provenance

Source

NASA MEaSUREs program, produced by the RADARSAT Geophysical Processing System (RGPS).

Collection Method

Derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the RADARSAT-1 satellite, using a 10km grid tracked at 3-day intervals.

Time Range

October 1996 through May 2008

Freshness

Data collection concluded on 2008-05-31; no ongoing updates.

Geography

Arctic Ocean sea ice cover