An updated archive of sea ice chart data is now available from NOAA@NSIDC. The U.S. National Ice Center Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Charts in SIGRID-3 Format data set contains information on total sea ice concentration as well as concentration by stage of development, and ice form. The charts are produced by the U.S. National Ice Center, with a temporal coverage of 2003 to present, and for most of the record the charts are weekly in frequency.
SIGRID-3 is a WMO vector format for ice chart data. Researchers who do not need the detail contained in the SIGRID-3 format may wish to use U.S. National Ice Center Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Concentration and Climatologies in Gridded Format. It is a reformatted (to GeoTIFF and NetCDF) version of the charts that has concentration by ice type in a compressed form.
The USNIC SIGRID-3 charts join the Canadian Ice Service Arctic Regional Sea Ice Charts in SIGRID-3 Format data set. These operational ice chart series hold information about sea ice regimes that is not available elsewhere.
We hope these data will find wide use for researching the changing composition of ice types in a region, for validating satellite data algorithms, for assessing historical risk to ice operations for ships under the terms of the IMO Polar Code, and more.
Any questions, please contact User Services at nsidc@nsidc.org.
