Assessment of AMSR-E sea ice concentration in ice margin zone using MODIS data

The AMSR-E sea ice concentration product with the spatial resolution of 6.25km is the finest published dataset of passive microwave in present. Based on the ice-water discrimination algorithm on visible image and data statistics, a method for AMSR-E sea ice concentration validation was given in this paper. To assess the AMSR-E ASI sea ice concentration product in ice margin zone, 12 clear sky samples were selected in Bering-Chukchi Seas to compare with the results come from MODIS images bases on channel 2 with 250m resolution during May and June, 2009. It shows that the average difference between the AMSR-E ASI and MODIS sea ice concentration is 0.672% with the RMS error of 16.838%. Accordingly, the ASI product is generally effectual and objective for mean state, while the uncertainty tends to be obvious in the ice margin zone. It is necessary to enhance the accuracy of product in sea ice margin zone by merging the passive microwave remote sensing data with higher resolution data, such as visible light remote sensing data.