Part 1: Download ImageJ and Sea Ice Data

School in Churchill

After a long flight from Ottawa, the Colorado students and Dr. Meier arrive in Churchill, Manitoba. They are greeted by their guide and host, Thomas, a local college student who is working on his degree in computer science. He's very anxious to be involved in this project. First, everyone takes a tour of the town and the Polar bear "jail." The tour ends at the school. There, the group is joined by the rest of their new project team. The Churchill team is lead by a local teacher named Susan. She introduces herself and the students who will be collaborating on the project. Introductions are brief as everyone is excited to hear Dr. Meier describe his work. Following some background information provided by Dr. Meier, specific step-by-step instructions begin.

Access the ImageJ download page, and download and install the application for your operating system.

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1. Click the 'ImageJ Download page' link above to open the ImageJ Download page in a new window.

2. On the download page, click the link that appears directly below the name of your computer's operating system (e.g. Mac, Windows, Linux). This action will transfer a compressed file of the software to your computer. Your browser should automatically expand the file, creating an ImageJ folder on your computer's hard drive.

1. Download Sea Ice Data for the Arctic from the years 1978-2006 from the NSIDC website as a "tar" or compressed file. Click the Monthly Sea Ice data sets link to download the 333 images in monthly order. Your computer will ask you what to do with the file. Simply save it to your downloads or desktop folder. Do not try to open it at this point in the lesson.
   Show me what a .tar file is
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   A .tar file is a compressed file. Later in the lesson you will be instructed how to open it. To learn more about this type of file read this Wikepedia article.
2. A new window will open and the download will be ready to begin. A dialog box will ask you where to save the data.
   Show me the download dialogue box
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3. Create a new folder for all of the data and products of this exercise. Store it in a place you can access easily such as on your desktop or in your documents folder. The file that you are downloading is about 45 mb so it may take several minutes to download.
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If you have difficulty with the .tar files you can try the zipped folder attached to this site. While our goal is for you to be able to download and analyze whichever Sea Ice images you want directly from the NSIDC site, we're offering another link to the necessary images so you can work through the analysis technique presented in this activity.
Download a compressed file that contains the sea ice images

• Right-click (ctrl-click on Macs) this link to monthly.zip ( 8.6MB Jun20 07) If you have limited memory choose quarterly.zip ( 2.8MB Nov22 07) (an even smaller file - 2.8mb, only has the files from months 3,6,9 and 12).
  Choose the "Download Link to Disk" or "Save Link As..." option.
• Once the file downloads, you may need to double-click it to decompress it. The decompressed file will be a folder named monthly or quarterly.
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On most computers, simply double-clicking - the file will launch your decompression software.
Show me how to use the NSIDC to access the sea ice files.
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The NSIDC Sea Ice Index is a collection of summary data and browse imagery of monthly sea ice conditions. It is derived from raw data fields produced for one of NSIDC's products: "Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave Data"
To download the data
1. go to the website http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0051.html
2. Click on the "Access Data" button. You will be asked to fill out a User Registration Form, though this can be bypassed with a link in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
3. There are three directories, each for different time periods.
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Most of the data, the oldest data, are in "final-gsfc", more recent data from the end of the "final-gsfc" through ~3-6 months ago are in "preliminary", and the most recent data (the last 3-6 months) are in "near-real-time". The data in the "final-gsfc" folder was processed by scientists at the Goddard space flight center.
4. Click on the "final-gsfc' folder to select it.
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Within each directory, are subfolders by hemisphere and then by "daily" and "monthly". It will generally be easiest to work with monthly data. The time of each field is in the filename with the 4-digit year immediately followed by the 2-digit month (and then immediately followed by the 2-digit day of month for the daily data).
5. Select from the list of files and download by right clicking on the name of the file and saving it to your desktop.
4. Once the download is complete and the file is decompressed, you can check to see if you have the full dataset. Open the folder named pub and keep opening all the embedded folders until you have opened the monthly folder (buried 7 levels down). NOTE: Do not open these files, merely check that they are available.
   Show me how to decompress a file
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   Recent versions of operating system software can recognize and decompress .tar files. Once it is downloaded, the .tar file may decompress automatically, or you may need to double-click on the file's icon to begin the process. If the computer you are using won't automatically decompress the file, check for decompression software on your computer. Launch the software, choose the option to decompress or "unzip" a file, then browse to where the compressed file is stored. If necessary, use an Internet search engine to search for "decompression software" for your computer. Two popular packages that are available are WinZip (Windoze) or StuffIt (Mac).
5. Familiarize yourself with the dates of each image from the file names. The first 4 digits indicate the year and next 2 digits tell the month. The "n" at the end of the file name indicates north. Scroll through the files and you will see that they are from 1978-2006. The first file name is nt_197810_f07_v01_n.bin. It represents sea ice concentration from October, 1978.