Satellite Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration Retrieval Errors over the Russian Arctic Seas

Summer errors of the sea ice concentrations (SICs), retrieved from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) measurement data over the Russian Arctic seas, are calculated by comparison of the standard daily SIC products for the summer Arctic months (June, July, August and September) of 2017–2019 with the sea ice data of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) which are considered as ground truth SIC. The AARI 7-day averaged data for the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East-Siberian and Chukchi Seas are explored since they contain detailed information about SICs. The standard AMSR2 SIC daily products of the University of Bremen (SIC1), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (SIC2) and the EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (SIC3) are averaged over 7 days and over AARI specified polygons with assigned SIC values for matching.