Sea-ice tracking on the east coast of Canada using NOAA AVHRR imagery

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Abstract
An Ice Tracking System (ITS) is under development which will automatically extract ice kinematic information from time sequential imagery over Canadian waterways. NOAA AVHRR data are routinely collected at the Ice Centre Environment Canada (ICEC) and are a valuable data source for operational ice analysis and forecasting. For this study AVHRR data were collected between January and February 1992 over the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The requirement for cloud-free data limited its use. Multiple images over short time intervals were available for a one to two day period, however these were followed by gaps of three to four days. On days when imagery was available synoptic conditions were always similar favouring a southeasterly ice drift. The east coast of Canada is a very difficult ice environment in which to extract accurate ice motion. The ice regime consists mainly of young ice types exhibiting very dynamic behaviour. To the NOAA sensor the ice cover can appear viscous and featureless. The inaccuracies in the extracted ice kinematic information was attributed to positional errors with the input data and the inability of the tracking algorithm to identify correctly the same features on time sequential images. Geocoding inaccuracies, a result of the systematic geocoding process, had an average error of 2.7 km. Algorithm inaccuracies, a result of incorrect matching, had an average error of 2.45 km.

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