Analysis of Antarctic Sea Ice Extent based on NIC charts and AMSR-E data

The extent of the Antarctica sea ice is not accurately defined only using low resolution passive microwave data, such as The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E). Due to the varied ice types at the ice edge, it is necessary to use additional resources that will have better results. Therefore sea ice edge data provided by National Ice Center (NIC) were used for better understanding. Sea ice extent for summer time period between January 1stand March 1st, and winter time period between August 1stand December 31stwere calculated from both AMSR-E and NIC products. The calculated summer ice extent from AMSR-E underestimated the extent by 30% for summer season comparing to the results from NIC dataset. Also sea ice extent calculated from AMSR-E underestimated the extent by 10% for winter season again comparing to the results from NIC data. For the quality purpose and validation NIC data were compared with NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) to see the detection of ice edge differs or agrees between these dataset. Comparison covered the entire Antarctic continent for the middle of summer and middle of winter. NIC and QuikSCAT data showed very good agreement. However, AMSR-E data did not agree with the other dataset and basically underestimated total ice concentration at the edge during the summer season.