Spectral Light Transmittance of Arctic Sea Ice

• Main Authors: Anhaus, Philipp, Katlein, Christian, Jutila, Arttu, Nicolaus, Marcel, Haas, Christian
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change; ice algae; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/48249/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/48249/1/A10_poster_ANHAUS_20181019.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.9033e6c9-e715-43d4-bd9a-1013a921fef7

Light transmittance through Arctic sea ice has an important impact on both the ocean heat content and the ice associated ecosystem. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the optical properties of sea ice to assess the role of the surface energy budget and its change due to climate change. Measurements of spectral transmittance can be used to investigate the influence of surface and ice properties regulating radiative transfer, especially on a larger horizontal scale. Here, we concentrate on categorizing snow and sea ice based on spectral transmittance data. Transmitted radiance and irradiance are measured at the underside of sea ice using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The scientific payload also includes CTD, fluorometer, pH-, nitrate-, oxygen-, attenuation sensor, upward-looking single-beam sonar, and periodically a surface and under ice trawl for assessing the spatio-temporal variability of sea ice algae. Thus, data for all disciplines in sea ice research can be recorded. The main benefits using the ROV compared to point measurements are the larger spatial coverage in comparably short times and the undisturbed sampling even under very thin sea ice, with parameters all collected during the same time. Snow depth is derived from a combination of terrestrial laser scanner data and manual measurements, while ice draft is measured using the single-beam sonar. Here, we present first data from the Last Ice campaign off Alert in May 2018. This region is dominated by sea ice with a larger thickness due to dynamic thickening. We investigated different ice regimes, such as First Year Ice with a continuous thickness of about 1.5 m and structured Multi Year Ice with thicknesses up to 6 m over the duration of four weeks to study the differences between various ice types.