NOAA@NSIDC to Release Sea Ice Index Version 2 Next Week

An improved version of the Sea Ice Index is coming. On Wednesday, 6 July 2016, Sea Ice Index Version 2 will be released. It will look and act the same as Version 1, but will have updated processing code and will use a new version of the input data. Because of these updates, minor changes in some of the ice extent and area numbers will be seen. These will be clearly described in the documentation, which will also be updated on 6 July. We are alerting users to this impending update because file names will change. Any scripts that automatically download Sea Ice Index data each day will need to be updated to reflect this file name change. The new file names will have a “_v2” appended to the end of the file name such as N_04_area_v2.txt and N_04_plot_v2.png. Further, NOAA@NSIDC has received support from the NOAA@NSIDC Big Earth Data Initiative (BEDI) program to create web services built around the Sea Ice Index. This will provide a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered Sea Ice Index images from the NSDIC web site. We hope to have a web service-enabled Sea Ice Index in place by the end of 2017. Data Set DOI: https://doi.org/10.7265/N5736NV7