POLAR VIEW IN THE ANTARCTIC - SERVICES
Global sea ice monitoring
Timely information on sea ice conditions is essential for all types of marine operations in the Southern Ocean. Global sea ice monitoring for the Antarctic will be based on extending a number of the services developed in the Northern hemisphere. However a number of differences between sea-ice in the Antarctic compared to the Arctic need to be taken into account. Southern hemisphere sea-ice cover extent is larger and shows a much larger yearly variability than in the Arctic. A smaller volume of ship traffic in the south means less interest by the national ice services in the Antarctic sea ice and therefore relatively fewer ice charts are produced. The use of these lower resolution data is the only way of providing regular information covering the entire Southern Ocean.
Passive microwave data from the AMSR-E instrument are used to provide information about sea ice extent and concentration. The University of Bremen delivers these daily datasets with spatial resolution of approximately 6km. This information offers a valuable broad view of sea ice conditions over a wide area.
Envisat SAR data is used to compile mosaics of the entire Antarctic region. Vexcel compile daily updated mosaics, based on ASAR Global Monitoring Mode data, with a spatial resolution up to 1 km. This provides an unprecedented regular view of sea ice distribution, completely unaffected by clouds.
Danish Technical University produce ice drift data in near real time from the ASAR Global Monitoring Mode and wide swath data. The 3-day period is selected in order to obtain maximum overlap between satellite swaths. Drifts are derived automatically using a cross correlation technique, producing a grid of drift vectors with 33km spacing. Data can be viewed in the online browser together with the other sea ice information layers.