Airborne snow depth on sea ice during the IceBird Winter 2019 campaign in the Arctic Ocean, Version 1

• Main Authors: Jutila, Arttu, King, Joshua, Ricker, Robert, Hendricks, Stefan, Helm, Veit, Binder, Tobias, Haas, Christian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2021
• Subjects: Arctic Ocean; Cryosphere; Sea ice; snow depth; Airborne surveys to collect measurements of sea ice thickness in the Arctic AWI_IceBird; Sea Ice Physics @ AWI AWI_SeaIce; Arctic; Beaufort Sea; Lincoln Sea; ice covered areas
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.932790; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.932790

Airborne observations of snow depth on sea ice were made in April 2019 during the winter campaign of the AWI IceBird campaign series. The data consist of five surveys, some with overlapping segments at low and high altitude, spanning sea-ice covered areas in the Lincoln Sea, Central Arctic Ocean, as well as the Beaufort Sea. For each flight, the geolocated snow depth data from an airborne frequency-modulated continuous-wave ultrawideband radar using an algorithm based on signal peakiness are provided with a point spacing of approximately 4-5 meters for low-altitude flights and 7-9 meters for high-altitude flights. The trajectory data contain the full and unfiltered data record with quality flags. Longer sections of altitude-flagged data in the low-altitude data arise from calibrations of an EM sensor. Each snow depth value represents the average depth within the radar footprint that has a theoretical smooth surface cross-/along-track diameter of 2.6/1.0 m at low altitude and 7.2/5.1 m at the high altitude.