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The NASA Team 2 algorithm uses a similar methodology as the NASA Team algorithm and employs PR and GR ratios. However, the NASA Team 2 algorithm also employs the 85 GHz channels to resolve some of the surface ambiguities, particularly those resulting from snow cover. The 85 GHz channel can accurately retrieve surface information over sea ice (at a higher resolution (16 x 14 km footprint) than the other SSM/I channels) in clear conditions. A drawback of the use of the 85 GHz channel is that it is quite sensitive to atmospheric interference from clouds and water vapor. For this reason, use of 85 GHz channels for sea ice concentration has been limited. The NASA Team 2 approach employs a forward atmospheric radiative transfer model with 11 standard climatological atmospheres to find a best-fit correction to the SSM/I brightness temperatures. The two NASA Team weather filters are employed to eliminate spurious ice retrieval s over open water. The NASA Team 2 obtains improved concentrations over the NASA Team and does not saturate to over 100% concentrations as the Cal/Val does. The NASA Team 2 is also more sensitive to thin ice than the NASA Team, although it appears to still underestimate thin ice concentrations in many areas. One drawback of the NASA Team 2 algorithm is that the 'best -fit' atmosphere used to correct the brightness temperatures can often vary from pixel to pixel. This results in noise in the concentration field and a 'speckled' appearance of the concentration image. Markus, T., and D.J. Cavalieri, 2000. "An enhancement of the NASA Team sea ice algorithm", IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sens., GE-38(3), 1387-1398.


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