Aqua MODIS Near Real-Time Sea Ice Extent and Temperature

Sea ice extent and surface temperature data from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. The dataset includes fields for sea ice by reflectance, ice surface temperature (IST), combined sea ice, and quality assurance flags. It is produced by the LANCEMODIS organization.

Use Cases

• Monitor sea ice extent changes using the combined sea ice field.
• Analyze ice surface temperature (IST) trends for polar climate studies.
• Assess data quality for sea ice detection using the reflectance pixel QA field.
• Map sea ice distribution at 1 km resolution using the sea ice by reflectance field.
• Distinguish sea ice from open ocean using the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) modified algorithm.

Strengths

• Provides 1 km resolution data for sea ice extent and temperature fields.
• Includes quality assurance (QA) flags for reflectance and IST data validation.
• Uses a modified NDSI algorithm for distinguishing sea ice from open ocean.

Limitations

• Geolocation fields (latitudes, longitudes) are at a lower 5 km resolution.
• Specific temporal coverage, row count, and dataset size are unknown.
• Data format is HDF-EOS, which may require specialized libraries for processing.

Provenance

Source

NASA Aqua satellite MODIS instrument.

Collection Method

Remote sensing data collected and processed by the LANCEMODIS organization.

Freshness

Near Real Time (NRT)

Geography

Global, with focus on polar sea ice regions.