Combined SMOS and SMAP sea ice thickness Arctic

This data set contains Arctic sea ice thicknesses derived from L-band passive microwave brightness temperatures. For this purpose, brightness temperatures at 40° incidence angle from the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellites were combined to a homogenised data set (see also related data sets). Sea ice thicknesses were then derived using the algorithm described in Tian-Kunze et al. (2014).

Data are generally produced for the freeze-up period from 15 October to 15 April. This data set contains data from on 1 April 2015 (first available SMAP data) to 15 April 2015 and for the winter seasons 2015/16 to 2017/18.

A detailed description of the data set can be found Schmitt and Kaleschke (2018) and in the document 1_Documentation_Combined_SIT.pdf.

Please note: Sea ice thicknesses from L-band are most suitable for thin ice and reach saturation for thicker sea ice (above 0.5 m - 1 m, depending on ice salinity and temperature). Thickness values with a saturation ratio of 100 % should be discarded (depending on the application)!

Version 1.0 of this data set is based on SMOS version v620 and SMAP version 3 data.

The files contain the following data fields:
sea_ice_thickness - sea ice thickness with post-processing to account for the thickness distribution
plane_layer_thickness - sea ice thickness using the plane layer assumption
thickness_uncertainty_upper - upper limit of the sea ice thickness uncertainty interval
thickness_uncertainty_lower - lower limit of the sea ice thickness uncertainty interval
saturation_ratio - ratio of plane layer thickness and maximum retrievable thickness (%)
TB_intensity - brightness temperature intensity combined from SMOS and SMAP at 40° incidence angle

The grid coordinates are provided as a separate file Latlon_e12.5.nc