Landsat-1 Multispectral Scanner surface type over water from supervised classification of surface broadband albedo estimates

Abstract: In the framework of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI+) sea ice essential climate variable (ECV) project phase 2, Landsat-1 Multispectral Scanner (MSS) images were obtained from https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ for both hemispheres with the purpose to evaluate the ESA CCI+ Nimbus-5 Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR) sea-ice concentration data product v1.1. From these Landsat-1 MSS images surface broadband albedo values were estimated based on channels 4 to 7 (mostly 4, 5, and 7). Secondly, a supervised classification was employed, classifying the broadband albedo maps into open water, thin/bare ice, and thick/snow-covered ice using simple threshold values selected based on visual manual interpretation of the images. Thresholds used for this classification are provided in the metadata txt-file along with the data. MSS images have been pre-processed and quality assessed as much as possible to avoid artefacts from missing and/or corrupt scanlines and clouds or cloud shadows.

TableOfContents: surface type flag (100: open water, 150: thin or bare sea ice, 200: thick or snow-covered ice, 255: land, missing data, or clouds)

Technical Info: dimensions actual: variable, depends on how the Landsat scene fits into a rectangular bounding box determined by the minimum and maximum values of latitude and longitude of each scene, something around 4000 columns x 4000 rows; temporalExtent_startDate: 1974-03-11; temporalExtent_endDate: 1974-09-08; temporalResolution: ~28 s / image; spatialResolution: 60; spatialResolutionUnit: meters; horizontalResolutionXdirection: 60; horizontalResolutionXdirectionUnit: meters; horizontalResolutionYdirection: 60; horizontalResolutionYdirectionUnit: meters; verticalResolution: none; verticalResolutionUnit: none; verticalStart: none; verticalEnd: none; instrumentName: Landsat-1: Multispectral Scanner (MSS); instrumentType: optical sensor; instrumentLocation: Landsat-1; instrumentProvider: NASA

Methods: [1] ESA CCI sea ice ecv project phase 2 product validation and intercomparison report for sea-ice concentration: D4.1_SICCI_P2_PVIR-SIC_Issue_1.1.pdf (chapter 3.3); [2] Koepke, P., Removal of Atmospheric Effects from AVHRR albedos, J. Appl. Meteorol., 28, 1341-1348, 1989; [3] Chander, G., Markham, B. L., and Helder, D. L.: Summary of current radiometric calibration coefficients for Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+, and EO-1 ALI sensors. Rem. Sens. Environ. 113, 893-903, https://doi.10.1016/j.rse.2009.01.007, 2009; [4] Metadata file containing thresholds for open water - thin/bare ice and thin/bare ice - thick/snow covered ice discrimination, the sun elevation angle and the used channels for 1974: 1974_NH_settings.txt

Units: 1

geoLocations:

• Northern Hemisphere: westBoundLongitude: -180.0 degrees East; eastBoundLongitude: 180.0 degrees East; southBoundLatitude: 50.0 degrees North; northBoundLatitude: 90.0 degrees North; geoLocationPlace: Northern Hemisphere over water

Size: (files are packed into one zip-file per year)

• Northern Hemisphere: 50 files in total  for 1974; 19.1 Gbyte (zipped: 12.0Gbyte) 

Format: netCDF

DataSources: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ [last access: 2025-09-01]

Contact: stefan.kern (at) uni-hamburg.de