Ice and Snow Thickness Variability and Change in the High Arctic Ocean Observed by In Situ Measurements


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Christian.Haas [ at ] awi.de

Abstract

In April 2017, we collected unique, extensive in situ data of sea ice and snow thickness. At 10 sampling sites, located under a CryoSat-2 overpass, between Ellesmere Island and 87.1°N mean and modal total ice thicknesses ranged between 2 to 3.4 m and 1.8 to 2.9 m, respectively. Coincident snow thicknesses ranged between 0.3 to 0.47 m (mean) and 0.1 to 0.5 m (mode). The profile spanned the complete multiyear ice zone in the Lincoln Sea, into the first-year ice zone farther north. Complementary snow thickness measurements near the North Pole showed a mean thickness of 0.31 m. Compared with scarce measurements from other years, multiyear ice was up to 0.75 m thinner than in 2004, but not significantly different from 2011 and 2014. We found excellent agreement with a commonly used snow climatology and with published long-term ice thinning rates. There was reasonable agreement with CryoSat-2 thickness retrievals.



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Eprint ID
45774
DOI 10.1002/2017GL075434

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Haas, C. , Beckers, J. , King, J. , Silis, A. , Stroeve, J. , Wilkinson, J. , Notenboom, B. , Schweiger, A. and Hendricks, S. (2017): Ice and Snow Thickness Variability and Change in the High Arctic Ocean Observed by In Situ Measurements , Geophysical Research Letters, 44 . doi: 10.1002/2017GL075434


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