A study of the Antarctic sea ice edge using SSM/I and in-situ observations

Ship data of the Antarctic sea ice edge location are compared with the SSM/I-derived ice edge locations for the same dates and longitudes. The data show that between March and October there is generally very good agreement between the observations and the satellite data, making the 15% threshold commonly used for the satellite data a good estimate of the true ice edge location. The bootstrap algorithm shows the best correlation with the observations, picking the presence of ice bands in the ice edge zone on two occasions when the TEAM algorithm did not. In November and December however, neither algorithm identifies these bands, and the SSMA ice edge is, on average, 1.0-1.56° latitude south of the observed ice edge for the bootstrap and TEAM algorithms respectively