A new algorithm to calculate sea ice concentration from the SSM/I 85GHz observations

A new algorithm has been developed to calculate sea ice concentration from any set of passive microwave observations. It was applied to estimate total ice concentration and partial concentration of three ice types using SSM/I 85 GHz observations. The essence of the algorithm is a mathematical optimization technique to determine the best solution from multi-channel observations of a heterogeneous footprint that contains ice types of highly complex and overlapped brightness temperature. Results were validated against ice concentrations from Radarsat image analysis; an operational product from the Canadian Ice Service (CIS). They have proven the successful performance of the algorithm.