Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sea Ice Sensor Degradation Hits Cryosphere Today

You may recall that I posted about how the National Snow and Ice Data Center has an issue with the DMSP satellite sensor channel used to detect sea ice. Cryosphere Today is a few days behind in update compared to NSIDC, and here is what their imagery now looks like before and after:

cryosphere2day_021909-022009-small

Above: Arctic “Insta-melt” Click for a larger image


Here is the link to reproduce the image above.


Larger “holes” are likely to open up in the arctic sea in the next couple of days as the sensor further degrades.


Here is what CT has to say as a caveat for the side by side images:

February 17, 2009 - The SSMI sensor seems to be acting up and dropping data swaths from time to time in recent days. Missing swaths will appear on these images as a missing data in the southern latitudes. If this persists for more than a few weeks, we will start to fill in these missing data swaths with the ice concentration from the previous day. Note - these missing swaths do not affect the timeseries or any other plots on the Cryosphere Today as they are comprised of moving averages of at least three days.

No mention of the issue on CT’s main page though. They are still commenting on George Will. They seem a bit out of touch on the sensor issue.


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