Automatic High-Accuracy Sea Ice Mapping in the Arctic Using MODIS Data

Abstract

The sea ice cover is changing rapidly in polar regions, and sea ice products with high temporal and spatial resolution are of great importance in studying global climate change and navigation. In this paper, an ice map generation model based on Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflectance bands is constructed to obtain sea ice data with a high temporal and spatial resolution. By constructing a training sample library and using a multi-feature fusion machine learning algorithm for model classification, the high-accuracy recognition of ice and cloud regions is achieved. The first product provided by this algorithm is a near real-time single-scene sea ice presence map. Compared with the photo-interpreted ground truth, the verification shows that the algorithm can obtain a higher recognition accuracy for ice, clouds, and water, and the accuracy exceeds 98%. The second product is a daily and weekly clear sky map, which provides synthetic ice presence maps for one day or seven consecutive days. A filtering method based on cloud motion is used to make the product more accurate. The third product is a weekly fusion of clear sky optical images. In a comparison with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) sea ice concentration products performed in August 2019 and September 2020, these composite images showed spatial consistency over time, suggesting that they can be used in many scientific and practical applications in the future.