An enhancement of the NASA Team sea ice algorithm

An enhancement of the NASA Team sea ice concentration algorithm overcomes t he problem of a low ice concentration bias associated with surface snow eff ects that are particularly apparent in Southern Ocean sea ice retrievals. T he algorithm has the same functional form as the NASA Team algorithm, but u ses a wider range of frequencies (19-85 GHz). It accommodates ice temperatu re variability through the use of radiance ratios as in the original NASA T eam algorithm, and has the added advantage of providing weather-corrected s ea ice concentrations through the utilization of a forward atmospheric radi ative transfer model, Retrievals of sea ire concentration with this new alg orithm for both the Arctic and Antarctic do not reveal the deficiencies pre sent in either the NASA Team or Bootstrap algorithms. Furthermore, quantita tive comparisons with infrared AVHRR data show that the enhanced algorithm provides more accurate ice concentrations with much less bias than the othe r two algorithms.