Newsletter #4

The OSI SAF delivers sea-ice concentration products in Near Real Time as well as in the form of Climate Data Records (CDRs) starting in the late 1970s. These are processed from polar-orbiting passive microwave radiometers which generally do not observe all the way to the poles, leaving an Arctic “polar observation hole”. The traditional technique for filling this hole involves a spatial interpolation which can produce unrealistic artifacts, especially for larger holes and during summer and early fall when the sea-ice edge is at high latitudes. Read about the new fill method that provides a more realistic fill for the polar observation hole in this story.

In the context of the OSI SAF Visiting Scientist Program, Giuseppe Grieco from the Instituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR-CNR) in Napoli, worked on the implementation of a Land Contribution Ratio (LCR) based Normalized Radar Cross Section (σ0) correction scheme applied to QuikSCAT measurements. σ0 noise characteristics and an accurate procedure aimed at mitigating the land contamination of coastal measurements are essential to improve the quality and sampling of coastal winds derived from scatterometers. Find out more in the full story.