Salinity and Stable Water Isotopes for Ice Cores in Leads during Leg 3 of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate 2020

• Main Authors: David Clemens-Sewall, Amy Macfarlane, Steven Fons, Mats Granskog, Jennifer Hutchings, Julia Schmale
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2022
• Subjects: Earth Science; Oceans; Sea Ice; Arctic; albedo; ice core; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A23N20G15

Climate models project large uncertainty in the rate of future Arctic sea ice loss and its climate impacts. On multi-decadal timescales, this uncertainty is largely due to differences in the strength of feedback processes within the models. For the Arctic system, changes in surface reflection of heat and light (albedo) dominate the feedback process with the most significant departures in the surface heat balance. However, models employ relatively crude representations of many processes that are relevant to surface albedo evolution. To improve model predictions, we need enhanced parameterizations that are informed by the collection and analysis of relevant observations. Better Arctic predictions are particularly critical given the large changes underway and the urgent need to plan for and adapt to changes soon. One uncertain process that has been the subject of interest in the past decade is wintertime snow loss into open water in leads. However, there are no published measurements of this snow loss in the Arctic. This dataset addresses this gap. Ice core samples were collected from four leads in April 2020 in the Central Arctic as part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC). Salinity and stable water isotopes were measured to determine the amount of meteoric water (snow) that had been incorporated into the lead ice. This dataset contains the core measurements, a map of lead locations, descriptions of the formation of each lead, and core photographs. The MOSAiC event numbers corresponding to each coring event are given below: SL_a - PS122/3_36-187 T - PS122/3_36-191 M - PS122/3_36-192 A (cores DC_A_1 through DC_A_6) - PS122/3_37-165 SL_b, SL_c, SL_d (cores DC_SS_301 through DC_SS_305) - PS122/3_38-160 A (core DC_A_7) - PS122/3_38-161