Abstract:
Sea ice products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) include level 2 swath data and level 3
gridded day and night composites, at 1 km resolution. Level 3 products
consist of tiles of data, approximately 1200 km by 1200 km in area,
gridded in a Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area (EASE-Grid) projection. The
sea ice algorithm uses a Normalized Difference Sea Ice Index (NDSI)
and
... other criteria to distinguish sea ice from open ocean, based on
reflective characteristics.
The level 3 night product (MOD29P1N3) contains the following fields: Ice Surface
Temperature (IST), IST Pixel QA, and Sea Ice by IST. The data also contain
local and global metadata. Latitude and longitude geolocation fields are at
5 km resolution, while all other fields are at 1 km resolution. Sea ice data
are in HDF-EOS format and are available by ftp. MODIS sea ice products are
considered provisional at this time. Product quality may not be optimal, and
incremental product improvements are still occurring.
This data set represents Version 3 (V003) of the MODIS processing scheme. The
V003 collection contains reprocessed V001 data from 5 March 2001 onward and V003
data from 24 May 2001 onward. V003 data contain processing refinements
accommodating algorithm, instrument and calibration stabilization.
V003 start dates will continually shift to earlier dates as V001 data are
reprocessed to V003. After V003 data are generated for a given day, the V001
data for the same day will still be available for ordering through the EOS Data
Gateway (EDG) for at least six months. Eventually, V003 data will completely
replace V001 data. 
