A new animation showing Arctic sea ice age derived from daily data collected by the SeaWinds scatterometer aboard the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite is available at NASA’s Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC). The data used in the animation were collected from June 20, 2002, through November 23, 2009, and colors in the animation indicate Arctic sea ice age: red indicates older ice and green indicates first-year ice. First-Year sea ice is defined as ice that forms only during that specific year; older, multi-year sea ice is defined as winter-time ice that survives the summer melt season and persists into the next season. (Note that there is no sound with the animation.)
The data used in the animation are part of the SeaWinds on QuikSCAT scatterometer-derived Arctic sea ice classification dataset, which was created by researchers at Brigham Young University and is available through NASA’s PO.DAAC. QuikSCAT was launched on June 19, 1999, and was operational from 1999 through 2009.
Explore the data at NASA’s PO.DAAC:
SeaWinds on QuikSCAT Arctic Sea Ice Age Classification (doi: 10.5067/QSSIA-BYU01)