Message Service #3482

29 April 2026

  • Sea ice

Operational release of the Global Sea-Ice Concentration Interim Climate Data Record (AMSR), OSI-438

The OSI SAF sea ice team is pleased to announce that the OSI SAF global Sea-Ice Concentration (SIC) Interim Climate Data Record (ICDR) from AMSR (OSI-438) will be released on 4th May 2026. With this release, the ICDR will have the label operational, after a full EUMETSAT and user review (it has been available as demonstrational product for a while).

This ICDR is a continuation of the associated CDR based on AMSR-E and AMSR2 data (OSI-458). The CDR covers the period from 01.06.2002 to 31.12.2020, and the ICDR starts on 01.01.2021.

The operational SIC ICDR product files will be available in netCDF format here on 4th May 2026:

Documentation about the Sea-Ice Concentration ICDR from AMSR product, including product user manual, validation report and algorithm theoretical basis document, is available here:
https://osi-saf.eumetsat.int/products/osi-438

The sea ice concentration ICDR from AMSR is produced daily in two modes: a nominal ICDR produced with 16-days latency and a fast-track ICDR produced with 2-days latency. The fast-track files are kept for 14 days until the equivalent nominal ICDR is produced and replaces the fast-track files for that day.
In addition to the daily products, monthly and yearly averaged products are also produced.

Some more practical details about what will happen on 4th May:

  1. Release of the full ICDR archive to date (20210101 throughout 20260502) on FTP and THREDDS. The new archive will replace all the previously disseminated demonstrational files on FTP and THREDDS.
  2. The demonstrational chain will be stopped.
  3. The first operational product to be distributed normally will then be the products with date stamp 20260419 (ICDR nominal) and 20260503 (ICDR fasttrack), distributed on 05/05/2026 around 07:15 UTC (nominal) and 08:30 UTC (fasttrack).

The operational OSI-438 product files are generally very similar to the demonstration files that have been available until now: they have the same file names, the same variable names, etc. Still, we note two differences:

  • There are some differences in attributes, for some variables and global;
  • There is a change in part of the processing chain (tie-point selection) to ensure that OSI-438 is a standalone production (the demonstration OSI-438 product had a remaining dependency on SSMIS data). The review process ensured that this change of algorithm maintains excellent climate consistency with the CDR OSI-458.

If you would like to have a look at the file that will become available on 4th May, samples are available here:
ftp://osisaf.met.no/reprocessed_test/ice/conc-cont-reproc-amsr/v3p0/2026/04/


If you have any questions, please contact the OSI SAF sea ice team on email osisaf-manager@met.no

 

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