Operational Ice Maps are produced on the fly by the German company Drift+Noise Polar Services based on data from optical, active, and passive microwave satellites at both high and low resolutions. After processing, extracted sea ice information in the desired area of interest is sent via communication satellites directly to the customer.
Left: In contrast to other products, the company's sea-ice concentration maps are based on running composites that are updated for each satellite swath. By doing this, the user can obtain sea-ice concentration data with a delay of less than 2 hours, and a frequency of up to 8 times a day depending on the location.
Centre: The operational ice maps system downloads, processes, and delivers high resolution SAR data from Sentinel-1 satellites in near-real time. The customers apply SAR data to support on-site decision making by extracting information such as ice drift, ice age, and deformation or position of leads.
Right: The data processing system can track ships and buoys using Sentinel-1 SAR data. The system will frequently check if new satellite scenes were acquired over a target. If new data is available, images are downloaded, processed, and sent to the customer in pre-defined formats and file sizes
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