Multi year sea ice concentration mapping using passive and active microwave satellite data

Though changes of the full ice cover in the Arctic are well described due to availability for processing SMMR/SSMI passive microwave data, changes of the composition of the Arctic ice cover, in terms of ice types still need to be quantified, at least for winter season. Algorithms for mapping multiyear ice concentrations based on passive microwave data suffer from a number of problems. In this paper, those problems are described and it has been shown that QuikSCAT scatterometer data can add complimentary information to that available from passive microwave, which can assist in fixing the boundary between first-year and multiyear ice and in removing erroneously classified by passive microwave algorithm multiyear ice in the ice edge area.