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uni-bremen are kind enough to continue to provide the service as other information may be inferred from the data...at the user's discretion
"Service" from "stopped" SMOS?
This is a recurring problem of this page: terms. "SMOS stopped" does not equal "does not produce meaningful results". "Other information may be inferred" does not equal "does not produce meaningful information". "Melt ponds confuse sensors" does not equal "wetness of the surface confuses sensors".
Since we're talking about, i'll note that from what i know, SMOS growing error in April has little to nothing to do with "melt ponds" nor with "wetness" of ice surface itself. Instead, the main problem is increasing presense of fog and thin clouds [Yu and Rothrock 1996]. This does not mean April and May SMOS data is "meaningless", however. It means different, more complex approaches are needed in treating raw data to have still useful and precise enough results. Specific data products having a cut at April 15 do not nesessarily mean all data products are stopped. The picture i gave as an example - is a kind of a data product itself, and is indeed useful for easy eye-balling of thin ice right now, in May.
Please note, i am not asking to explain every little detail in this topic. I ask to use non-contradicting terms. Like, instead of "melt ponds confuse sensors" - say, for example, "technology limitations disallow reliable total Arctic ice volume measurement after mid-April based on those sensors". Like, instead of "SMOS stopped" say "SMOS measurements stop being used for calculating total ice volume mid-spring due to growing measurement errors which currently we're unable to remove". Etc.
If we'd be failing to avoid "contradicting per common sense of a non-scientist" statements here - even when such contradictions are in error de-facto - then what exactly this topic is for?