This is a simple index which looks at the 360x1-degree longitudinal wedges around the Antarctic continent to see if there is any sea ice (where sea ice concentration is greater than 15%) to the north of the continent in each of these wedges. The index goes from 0 (sea ice to the north off the continent in every longitude wedge) to 360 (no sea ice around the continent at all. Notes about the spreadsheet: "-" means no data. Satellite data was not available for those years. Otherwise the index goes from 0 through to 360. - Zero means that there is no longitude around the continent where there is coastal exposure. - 18 (for example) means that there are 18 longitudinal wedges around the continent with coastal exposure. This project used the following NASA data to develop the coastal exposure index: Cavalieri, D. J., C. L. Parkinson, P. Gloersen, and H. J. Zwally. 1996, updated yearly. Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data, Version 1. [1979-2015]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/8GQ8LZQVL0VL. [2016-05-30]

These data give the maximum extent of sea ice in the southern hemisphere by day and by winter season and the mean maximum extent by month. Data cover the 1979/1980 to 2007/2008 seasons. The data are available in csv files and, in the case of the mean monthly data, as point and line shapefiles.

Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 1329 See the link below for public details on this project. ---- Public Summary from Project---- The Antarctic Circumpolar Wave is a mode of high latitude variability involving the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice. Some research indicates it has a period of about 5 years but the robustness and persistence has yet to be fully established. This project will examine the nature of the ACW in a long data series, and will determine whether the wave is related to Australian rainfall. In this project, sea ice data were sourced from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0449, USA). The NCEP reanalysis data set was sourced from: NOAA/ National Weather Service, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (5200 Auth Road, Camp Springs, Maryland, 20746 USA). Australian rainfall data were taken from Jones and Weymouth (1997: An Australian Monthly Rainfall Dataset. Technical Report No. 70, Bureau of Meteorology, 19 pp.) compilation and provided digitally by the Bureau of Meteorology. The sea ice concentration data used were for the Antarctic only (the entire Antarctic sea ice domain). Data started in 1978. All data were collected by satellite. A link to a metadata record for these data are available from the URL given below. Two NCEP reanalysis data sets were used in this study. The first was NCEP/NCAR, with 6-hourly data available from 1958 (see the URL provided below for further information). The second was the NCEP/DOE set, with 6-hourly data available from 1979 (see the URL provided below for further information). In this project the following model/analysis was applied: Application of The University of Melbourne cyclone tracking scheme (Simmonds et al., 2003, Monthly Weather Review, 131, 272-288) and a broad range of statistical tests. Brief details are provided in the Summary. See the link for the pdf document for more detailed information. These complex statistical analyses were run over the entire length of the project (2001/02 - 2003/04). They were run on the Sun Workstation cluster in the School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne.

The data comprise images (encapsulated postscript and PNG formats) showing the integrated solar irradiance exposure of sea ice. The exposure value for ice at a given grid point was calculated by computing the motion trajectory of that patch of ice across the autumn/winter season (1-March to 1-November). Daily motion data were obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0116.html). The integrated radiation exposure was then calculated using daily estimates of downward solar flux from the NCEP/NCAR re-analyses. The values shown in the images are cumulative photosynthetically active radiation expressed in W-days/m^2. Please contact the data custodian before using these data. This work was done as part of ASAC project 2943 (ASAC_2943). See the link below for public details about the project.

This dataset relates to long-term change and variability in annual timings of sea ice advance, retreat and resultant ice season duration in East Antarctica derived from the satellite passive-microwave time series dating back to Nimbus 7. These were calculated from satellite-derived ice concentration data for the period 1979/80 to 2009/10. The dataset includes more detailed analysis of change and variability in sea ice conditions along meridional transects i.e., 110 degrees E and 140 degrees E relating to sea ice concentration and extent, and along 90 deg E, 100 deg E, 110 deg E and 140 deg E for trends in sea ice concentration for the period 1979-2010. Also included are monthly sea-surface temperature (SST) trends mapped north of the East Antarctic sea-ice zone for the period 1982-2010. The SST data are from the Reynolds and Smith OLv2 dataset. These data form the basis of the publication: Massom, R.A., P. Reid, S. Stammerjohn, B. Raymond, A. Fraser and S. Ushio. 2013. Change and variability in East Antarctic sea ice seasonality, 1979/80-2009/10. PloS ONE, 8(5), e64756, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064756

The data are from our Nature Article from June 2018: "Antarctic ice shelf disintegration triggered by sea ice loss and ocean swell". The abstract is: "Understanding the causes of recent catastrophic ice shelf disintegrations is a crucial step towards improving coupled models of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and predicting its future state and contribution to sea-level rise. An overlooked climate-related causal factor is regional sea ice loss. Here we show that for the disintegration events observed (the collapse of the Larsen A and B and Wilkins ice shelves), the increased seasonal absence of a protective sea ice buffer enabled increased flexure of vulnerable outer ice shelf margins by ocean swells that probably weakened them to the point of calving. This outer-margin calving triggered wider-scale disintegration of ice shelves compromised by multiple factors in preceding years, with key prerequisites being extensive flooding and outer-margin fracturing. Wave-induced flexure is particularly effective in outermost ice shelf regions thinned by bottom crevassing. Our analysis of satellite and ocean-wave data and modelling of combined ice shelf, sea ice and wave properties highlights the need for ice sheet models to account for sea ice and ocean waves." Details of the analyses and data used, and the data generated by this study, are given in the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0212-1. Code availability: Analytical scripts used in this study are freely available from the authors via the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Data availability: The datasets and products generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The datasets forming the basis of the study are available as follows: (1) Sea ice: Daily estimates of satellite-derived sea ice concentration (gridded at a spatial resolution of 25 x 25 km) derived by the NASA Bootstrap algorithm for the period 1979-2010 were obtained from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) dataset at: http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0079. Accessed August 2015. (2) Waves: Ocean wave-field data were obtained from the CAWCR (Collaboration for Australian Weather and Climate Research) Wave Hindcast 1979–2010 dataset run on a 0.4 x 0.4° global grid: https://doi.org/10.4225/08/523168703DCC5. Accessed September 2017. (3) Satellite visible and thermal infrared imagery of ice shelves and disintegration events: The NOAA AVHRR image of the Larsen1995 disintegration used in Figure 2 was obtained from the British Antarctic Survey: http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/bas_publ.html. Accessed June 2015. MODIS visible and 839 thermal infrared imagery from the US NSIDC archive at: http://nsidc.org/data/iceshelves_images/. Accessed June 2012. The study involved 2 model components, and model output is described below. The 2 models are: (i) a model of ocean swell attenuation by sea ice; and (ii) an ice shelf-ocean wave interaction model. Descriptions of both are given in the Nature paper (Methods section). DESCRIPTIONS OF THE 13 INDIVIDUAL DATA FILES PROVIDED (NB DESCRIPTIONS OF DATASETS GENERATED RELATIVE TO THE FIGURES) ARE GIVEN IN THE FILES: (1) Source data for Figures 4 (parts a-d), 5 and 6a are given in Excel spreadsheet files "Source-Data_2017-07-09041A_Figure.....xlsx". (2) Source data for Extended Data Figures 1 (parts a-b), 3 (parts b,d and parts a,c), 4 (parts b,d and a,c) and 6 are given in Excel spreadsheet files "Source-Data_2017-07-09041A_EDFig.....xlsx".