NOAA/NSIDC Sea Ice Concentration Climate Data Record

A daily and monthly time series from 25 October 1978 to the present provides a Climate Data Record of sea ice concentration for both polar regions. The record is generated by combining estimates from the NASA Team and NASA Bootstrap algorithms applied to passive microwave data. All data are provided on a consistent 25 km x 25 km grid.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term sea ice decline based on the consistent 40+ year time series.
• Comparing Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions using the hemispherically separate data.
• Validating climate models with the algorithmically combined concentration estimates.
• Monitoring near-real-time ice conditions by referencing the associated near-real-time dataset.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent, long-term record spanning over four decades, from 1978 to present.
• Combines two established algorithms (NASA Team and NASA Bootstrap) for potentially more reliable estimates.
• Offers both daily and monthly temporal resolutions for analysis at different scales.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data structure are not provided in the available metadata.
• The exact data volume (size, row count) is unknown across all sources.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified', requiring further investigation.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from passive microwave satellite data using a rule-based combination of NASA Team and NASA Bootstrap algorithms.

Time Range

25 October 1978 through the most recent processing

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-09 according to datagov.

Geography

North and south polar regions