Blended VIIRS and AMSR2 Sea Ice Concentration
Presentation 1530-1600. An experimental blended Sea Ice Concentration (SIC) product has been developed that utilizes derived ice concentration from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR2) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) from Suomi NOAA Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite. After both VIIRS and AMSR2 images are remapped into a 1 km EASE-Grid, a Best Linear Unbiased Estimator (BLUE) method is used to combine the AMSR2 and VIIRS ice concentrations for a blended product at 1 km resolution under all sky conditions. For validation, high spatial resolution Landsat data are collocated with VIIRS and AMSR2 from 1 February 2017 to 31 October 2019. Bias, standard deviation, and root mean squared errors are calculated between the SICs of VIIRS, AMSR2, and the blended field. It is found that 1) the blended SIC outperforms the individual VIIRS and AMSR2 SICs, 2) the higher resolution VIIRS data provides beneficial information to improve upon AMSR2 SIC under clear sky conditions, especially during the summer melt season, and 3) the AMSR2 SIC has a consistent negative bias near and above the melting point.