A new sea ice concentration product in the polar regions derived from the FengYun-3 MWRI sensors

Abstract

Sea ice concentration (SIC) is the main geophysical variable for quantifying change in sea ice in the polar regions. A continuous SIC product is key to informing climate and ecosystem studies in the polar regions. Our study generates a new SIC product covering the Arctic and Antarctic from November 2010 to December 2019. It is the first long-term SIC product derived from the Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI) sensors on board the Chinese FengYun-3B, FengYun-3C, and FengYun-3D satellites, after a recent re-calibration of brightness temperature. We modified the previous Arctic Radiation and Turbulence Interaction Study Sea Ice (ASI) dynamic tie point algorithm mainly by changing input brightness temperature and initial tie points. The MWRI-ASI SIC was compared to the existing ASI SIC products and validated using ship-based SIC observations. Results show that the MWRI-ASI SIC mostly coincides with the ASI SIC obtained from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager series sensors, with overall biases of −1 ± 2 % in the Arctic and 0.5 ± 2 % in the Antarctic, respectively. The overall mean absolute deviation between the MWRI-ASI SIC and ship-based SIC is 16 % and 17 % in the Arctic and Antarctic, respectively, which is close to the existing ASI SIC products. The trend of sea ice extent (SIE) derived from the MWRI-ASI SIC closely agrees with the trends of the Sea Ice Index SIEs provided by the Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Therefore, the MWRI-ASI SIC is comparable with other SIC products and may be applied alternatively. The MWRI-ASI SIC dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.945188 (Chen et al., 2022b).