Trends in sea ice extent as observed from microwave remote sensing

Changes in sea ice extent are strong modulators of climate change as well as indicator of the effect of global warming. The ocean-atmospheric heat budget is also affected by the sea ice dynamics owing to reflection of solar radiation back to the space by sea ice cover. In the present work, we have analysed about 30 years of sea ice data (1981–2013) over the Antarctic and Arctic regions using 25 km spatial resolution re-gridded data products obtained from National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), USA. These sea ice data products result from combined observations by the Scanning Multi-channel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on Nimbus-7 platform and a series of Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) instruments on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites.