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Description

This data set reports average daily horizontally and vertically polarized brightness temperatures; sea ice concentrations; and snow depths over sea ice on 12.5 km resolution north and south polar stereographic grids. Ungridded sea ice motion data are also available for the Arctic. The data are derived from observations acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) for EOS (AMSR-E) and AMSR2 instruments that have been spatially resampled by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to unify the AMSR-E and AMSR2 missions.

Brightness temperatures are available at 18.7 GHz, 23.8 GHz, 36.5 GHz and 89.0 GHz for ascending and descending orbits, and as a single daily average. Sea ice concentrations are generated with the Enhanced NASA Team (NT2) algorithm; a separate variable reports the daily sea ice concentration difference between the legacy AMSR Basic Bootstrap Algorithm (ABA) and the NT2.

Product Summary

Platforms
Aqua ,
GCOM-W1
Instruments
AMSR-E ,
AMSR2
Spatial Extent

N: -39.23 S: -89.24 E: 180 W: -180

,

N: 89.24 S: 30.98 E: 180 W: -180

Spatial Resolution
12.5 Kilometers x 12.5 Kilometers
Geographic Region
POLAR
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
GEODETIC
Temporal Extent
2002-06-01 to 2011-10-04 ,
2012-07-02 to Present
Concept ID
C3243521611-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
ACTIVE
Number of Files/Granules
8177
Processing Level
3
Science Keywords
Brightness Temperature ,
Sea Ice Concentration ,
Sea Ice Motion ,
Snow Depth

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

Meier, W., Markus, T., & Comiso, J. (2018). AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified L3 Daily 12.5 km Brightness Temperatures, Sea Ice Concentration, Motion & Snow Depth Polar Grids, Version 1 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/RA1MIJOYPK3P Date Accessed: 2025-12-13

Documents

USER'S GUIDE

GENERAL DOCUMENTATION