Objectives
The overall objective is to develop and implement a set of sea ice downstream services for polar users and stakeholders in the area of climate research, marine safety and environmental monitoring. SIDARUS will extend the present GMES services with new satellite-derived sea ice products, ice forecasting from regional models and validation of sea ice products using in situ data
Specific objectives:
(1) Develop sea ice classification and iceberg detection using new high-resolution SAR images with different frequency and polarization, and implement a monitoring service based on SAR data from Sentinel-1
(2) Provide sea ice thickness data for thin ice (<≈ 0.5 m) using the new 1.4 GHz passive microwave data from SMOS, as a complement to the ice thickness data from CryoSat
(3) Collect and analyze data on sea ice thickness and other ice parameters data from airborne, in situ and underwater platform experiments in order to validate satellite retrievals and fill gaps in sea ice observations that satellite data cannot provide
(4) Develop and validate sea ice albedo retrieval from multi-spectral optical images, e.g MODIS on the EOS platforms and MERIS and AATSR on ENVISAT
(5) Provide integrated maps of marine mammal tracks from ARGOSS data and sea ice maps from satellite data
(6) Implement a high-resolution operational ice-ocean model in order to provide sea ice and iceberg forecasts on regional and local scale
(7) Demonstrate sea ice monitoring and forecasting services to user groups by integration of observational products from several platforms and simulation/forecasting products from global and regional models using GIS and web technology
(8) Plan sustainable sea ice downstream services for GMES, consisting of both free-of-charge and commercial products
