Assessment of AMSR-E Sea Ice Concentration Products at Ice Edges in Antarctic

According to the ASPeCt sea ice visual observation protocol, we extracted the sea ice edge from MODIS images and assessed the quality of AMSR-E SIC product using a corresponding MODIS Sea Ice Concentration(MODIS SIC). Results show that AMSR-E pixels located at the ice edges have a significantly different mean SIC value from the well-established 15% threshold. The correlation between AMSR-E and MODIS SIC is rather low with coefficients R²≤0.2 and the ASI algorithm underestimates sea ice edge concentrations in summer. Then transect analysis, applied on all the ice areas(including multi-year ice, one-year ice, new ice and open water), however, show that AMSR-E SIC and MODIS SIC have a good linear relationship with R² of 0.82 in summer and 0.81 in winter. When AMSR-E SIC value falls between 20% and 30%, it has larger errors compared with the other range of SIC values.