NSIDC is screwed. The Japanese aren't planning to launch another AMSR-E satellite until 2022 and the present satellite is at the end of its life expectancy. Obviously, there are other satellites but they have different instruments that measure different spectra at different resolutions. Efforts to patch together different data sets from different types of satellites will induce a variety of errors. It's going to get ugly. This story is outrageous. From the Mongabay article:
With an inevitable U.S. satellite gap looming, it seems reasonable to assume that international programs could take over as the planet’s ongoing eye in the sky. But according to Serreze, it’s not that easy or simple.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has a satellite program known as Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR). From 2002 to 2011, NASA and the Japanese had a joint mission, known as AMSR-E, but when that ended, the Japanese launched AMSR-2 in 2012, with AMSR-3 slated to go up in 2022. But the Japanese satellites use different microwave frequencies and different spatial resolution than the DMSP F-series.
“You can’t suddenly piece on the record from AMSR-2 to the F-series,” explains Serreze. The two systems aren’t interchangeable.