Tools and Data

Tool 1

Image J

ImageJ (will open in new window) is a public domain Java image processing program inspired by NIH Image for the Macintosh. It runs, either as an online applet or as a downloadable application, on any computer with a Java 1.1 or later virtual machine. ImageJ can display, edit, analyze, process, save and print 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit images. It can read many image formats including TIFF, GIF, JPEG, BMP, DICOM, FITS and "raw." It supports "stacks," a series of images that share a single window, and animation. It can calculate area and pixel value statistics of user-defined selections. It can measure distances and angles. Images can be zoomed up to 32:1 and down to 1:32. All analysis and processing functions are available at any magnification factor. Spatial calibration can be set to provide real world dimensional measurements.

Tool Builder

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Tool Cost

Free-This software is in the public domain.

Tool Help

Basic Concepts of using ImageJ will open in a new window

Tool 2

Tool Name Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Corporation www.microsoft.com Home Page for Excel (will open in a new window)

Tool Cost

Students and educators may be able to purchase this software at a reduced cost.

Data Source 1

Sea Ice

The Sea Ice Index ( This site may be offline. ) provides easy-to-access and use browse imagery and text formatted data, providing information on monthly sea ice conditions since 1978. The text data can be imported into spreadsheet software to investigate anomalies and trend. Raw data can be used to analyze daily conditions and daily/monthly regional trends and anomalies. The browse and summary data provide imagery of monthly sea ice conditions and anomalies, as well as text files with monthly total extent and area values. The raw data are 2-dimensional gridded fields with daily and monthly sea ice concentration at 25-km spatial resolution. Data are accessible via ftp through a web browser or ftp server. Data summaries can be imported into spreadsheets. Raw data can be input into image processing software (e.g., ImageJ, ENVI, etc.).

For more information on this data set see Exploring Sea Ice Data from Satellites

A detailed explanation of the remote sensing method used to gather this data can be found at the National Snow and Ice data center website.

Geospatial Coverage

The data is of the sea ice extent and concentration in the Arctic region.

Temporal Coverage

The data sets are for the years 1979-2006. For this exercise the monthly data are used.

Data Provider

This data provided by Walt Meier of National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, CO.

Data Help

NSIDC User Services, nsidc@nsidc.org

Data Source 2

NCEP Temperature Re-analysis Fields

NCEP is the National Centers for Environmental Predictions. The datasets they offer are developed from weather station data, satellite data (for the period that satellites have been gathering data), and computer models. The recent data is an operational product, reporting results in near-real-time.

For historical data, NCEP completes a re-analysis of the data every few years. For this, they examine existing data and add in any new data that weren't available operationally. They also make quality control checks to delete erroneous data and make adjustments for differences in data quality to de-emphasize any biases.


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