RADARSAT Constellation Mission / Sentinel-1 Sea Ice Motion (RCMS1SIM)

Monitoring of sea ice dynamics is of vital importance to our overall understanding of how the Arctic cryosphere is responding to changes in the Earth's climate. With the recent launch of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) in 2019 and the continuing operation of the Sentinel-1 (S1) fleet, these spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) platforms provide routine coverage of the pan-Arctic domain with their all-weather, cloud-penetrating imaging systems. Operating on overlapping pairs of images from these satellites, the Environment and Climate Change Canada Automated Sea Ice Tracking System (ECCC-ASITS) routinely monitors sea ice motion across the pan-Arctic domain. The findings of this analysis are summarized in the attached publication (Howell et al., 2022; see “Associated Publication” in data links).


Sea ice motion tracked by ECCC-ASITS is used to generate RCM/S1 Sea Ice Motion (RCMS1SIM) products for the pan-Arctic domain. These products provide information on sea ice velocity (speed and direction) as well as an estimate of uncertainty. There are currently two product lines; the first being generated on the 25km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid (EASE-Grid; https://nsidc.org/data/ease ) v1.0 specification for a 7-day temporal window, and the second being generated on the 6.25km EASE-Grid v2.0 specification for a 3-day temporal window. Both products are available from March 2020 to present and are updated daily with a 2-day lag. These data are provided in Esri Shapefile (zip-compressed) and Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) data formats to support the widest-possible number of visualization and analysis use-cases. Further technical details on the products and variables within can be found in the documentation stored with the data.

Basic view

Metadata Record Information

File Identifier
09ab22c4-e211-4d23-afe6-9e7aa6831c62 XML
Date Stamp
2023-01-20T15:09:15
Metadata language

eng; CAN
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy Level
Dataset
Custodian
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; S&TB/ASTD/CRD
Principal investigator
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; S&TB/ASTD/CRD
Canada
 

Data identification

Date (Creation)
2022-05-31
Date (Publication)
2022-03-22
Status
On going
Metadata language

eng; CAN
Character set
utf8
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
  • Geoscientific information
Maintenance and Update Frequency
As needed
Custodian
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; S&TB/ASTD/CRD

Keywords

Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus

  • Ice

  • Arctic

  • Climate

  • Satellites

Government of Canada Departments and Agencies

  • Environment and Climate Change Canada

Program (PAA)

  • 2.1.3. Climate Information, Predictions and Tools

Continents, countries, sea regions of the world.

  • Arctic Ocean

GC Security Level

  • Unclassified
 
Use Limitation

Open Government Licence - Canada ( http://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada )

Access Constraints
License
Use Constraints
License

Extent

Description

Arctic Ocean
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S
E
W
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Ref. system Reference Systems

Reference system identifier
http://www.epsg-registry.org / EPSG:3408 /
Reference system identifier
http://www.epsg-registry.org / EPSG:6931 /
 

Distribution

Distribution Formats

Distribution format
  • NetCDF ( 4 )

  • SHP ( 1 )

    File decompression technique

    zip

 
Author
  Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; STB/ASTD/CRD
 
 

Overviews

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E
W
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Keywords

GC Security Level
Unclassified
Government of Canada Core Subject Thesaurus
Arctic Climate Ice Satellites
Government of Canada Departments and Agencies
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Program (PAA)
2.1.3. Climate Information, Predictions and Tools

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