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Sea Ice

The project aims to advance the retrieval capability for two main variables of the Sea Ice Essential Climate Variable (ECV): Sea ice concentration and sea ice thickness.

About the project

Polar sea ice is both an indicator and a driver of global climate change. We now have over 40 years of satellite data (since the late 1970s) to directly monitor its evolution in concentration, area, and extent and almost 30 years (since the early 1990s) for its thickness.

Although satellite observations are the foundation for most of our knowledge about the evolution of the global sea ice cover, progress is still acutely needed to improve the observations of the Sea Ice Essential Climate Variable, in particular to achieve better spatial resolution, better consistency across satellite missions and longer time series.

Learn more about the Sea Ice project

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