Southern Hemisphere Weekly Ice Limits from 1973 to 1978

Southern Ocean weekly sea ice limits were digitized from U.S. Navy Fleet Weather Facility ice charts at the Max-Planck Institut für Meteorologie in Hamburg. The dataset covers a 5.5-year period from January 1973 to June 1978, with data gridded at 5-degree longitude intervals. It is hosted by NASA and NSIDC but carries a cautionary note about a lack of formal quality checks.

Use Cases

• Analyzing weekly sea ice extent changes in the Southern Ocean between 1973 and 1978.
• Validating or providing context for longer-term climate model simulations of Antarctic sea ice.
• Studying the spatial distribution of ice limits at a 5-degree longitude grid resolution.
• Investigating seasonal and interannual variability in Southern Hemisphere ice cover during the 1970s.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent weekly time series over a 5.5-year period from 1973 to 1978.
• Data is spatially gridded at a defined 5-degree longitude interval for analysis.
• Sourced from authoritative operational ice charts produced by the U.S. Navy Fleet Weather Facility.
• Presence across multiple government platforms (Data.gov, NASA Earthdata) indicates recognized importance.

Limitations

• The data provider explicitly warns that the dataset has not been quality-checked and lacks documentation.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (1978 vs. 2026), creating provenance uncertainty.
• Specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not documented in any source.

Provenance

Source

Digitized from U.S. Navy Fleet Weather Facility ice charts at Max-Planck Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg.

Collection Method

Digitization of weekly operational ice charts.

Time Range

1973-01-01 to 1978-06-30

Freshness

2026-03-12 21:15:14.329587

Geography

Southern Ocean/Southern Hemisphere