Comparison of operational ice charts with satellite based ice concentration products in the Baltic Sea

Satellite remote sensing data is used for operational monitoring of sea ice parameters in many countries locating on high latitude. The routinely monitored regions are interesting from the economical as well as from safe navigation point of view and include Baltic Sea, coastal waters of Canada (Hudson Bay, Canadian Arctic region, Great Lakes), Barents Sea, Kara Sea etc. The operational ice services in Sweden and Finland have been using a system called IceMap for many years. In this paper we will assess the possibility of using automatically processed satellite data for ice concentration estimation. The investigated satellite products include SIC from (1) Ocean & Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF), (2) Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), and (3) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The work aims at investigating whether one of these, or perhaps a combination of several, may be used operationally as an alternative or as a complimentary data to the IceMap system. This will be accomplished by objectively comparing the ice charts from the satellite products with the IceMap ice charts produced operationally by the Swedish Ice Service at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). Visual comparison and correlation analysis will be carried out between the different products and the advantages and disadvantages of each product are discussed in the paper.