| Summary: | Autonomous ice mass balance buoys (IMBs) and their successors, the seasonal ice mass balance buoys (SIMBs), have routinely been deployed in the Arctic sea ice pack since 2000. These buoys were designed to make in situ observations of changes in the local sea ice mass balance and to determine the driving forces behind thermodynamic ice mass balance variations. They measure snow accumulation and ablation; ice thickness; ice growth; ice surface and bottom melt; the temperature profile from the air, through the snow and ice, and into the upper ocean; barometric pressure; and ice drift. Some SIMBs also record other parameters such as incident and transmitted light and changes in relative freeboard height. Results from these buoys have and will continue to enhance our understanding of the dramatic changes occurring in the Arctic sea ice cover. The dataset serves as a baseline documentation of Arctic mass balance, is valuable for validating large scale global climate models (GCMs) and small scale ice process models, and provides ground-truth data to support the development of instruments and algorithms to remotely sense snow depth, ice thickness, and the onset of melt and freeze-up. Additional information about the archive files can be found in IMB_Metadata.pdf and near real-time data is available on the website: http://imb-crrel-dartmouth.org/imb.crrel/index.htm.
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