This data set provides a Climate Data Record (CDR) of sea ice concentration from passive microwave data. It provides a consistent, daily and monthly time series of sea ice concentrations from 09 July 1987 through the most recent processing for both the north and south polar regions on a 25 km x 25 km polar stereographic grid.
The NOAA/NSIDC CDR is based on the recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) (2004). It is produced from gridded brightness temperatures from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F8, F11, and F13 Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) passive microwave radiometers and the DMSP F17 Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) passive microwave radiometer.
Variables containing standard deviation, quality flags, and projection information are also included in the netCDF files. Data are available via FTP.