VIIRS Sea Ice Cover Product Validation
Version 1 Validation Statement
Validation at stage 1 has been achieved for the NASA VIIRS Sea Ice Cover (VNP29) product. A comparison was made between the VIIRS/NPP Sea Ice Cover 6-Min L2 Swath 375 m, Version 1 (Tschudi et al., 2017) and AMSR-2 Sea Ice Concentration (Meier et al., 2018). Figure 1 shows the overlap between the 2 products on April 6, 2019 for one swath of the VNP29 product.
We find that for all pixels where the VNP29 product shows ice (blue), the AMSR-2 concentration product also detects ice present. All VIIRS pixels detecting ice in the VNP29 product had corresponding AMSR-2 ice concentrations that were mostly between 80 and 100%. Very few VNP29 pixels detected open water, and the few that did had no valid AMSR-2 concentrations.
Figure 1. VNP29 VIIRS/NPP Sea Ice Cover 6-Min L2 Swath 375 m (blue) and AMSR-2 Sea Ice Concentration for April 6, 2019.
Support Studies
Meier, W. N., T. Markus, and J. C. Comiso. 2018. AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified L3 Daily 12.5 km Brightness Temperatures,
Sea Ice Concentration, Motion & Snow Depth Polar Grids, Version 1. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and
Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/RA1MIJOYPK3P.
Tschudi, M., G. Riggs, D. K. Hall, and M. O. Román. 2017. VIIRS/NPP Sea Ice Cover 6-Min L2 Swath 375 m, Version 1.
Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center.
doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VNP29.001.
