The Antarctic sea ice cover from ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2: freeboard, snow depth and ice thickness ...

• Main Author: Kacimi, Sahra
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Root 2023
• Subjects: Amundsen Sea; Antarc*; Antarctic; Ross Sea; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.602asy; https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.602ASY

We offer a view of the Antarctic sea ice cover from lidar (ICESat-2) and radar (CryoSat-2) 5 altimetry, with retrievals of freeboards, snow depth, and ice volume that span an 8-month winter between April, 2019 and November 16, 2019. Snow depths are from freeboard differences. The remarkable response of the ice cover to mechanical convergence in the coastal Amundsen Sea was captured in the correlated increase in local freeboards and thickness. The multiyear ice in the West Weddell sector also stands out with mean sector thickness of > 2 m. Thinnest ice is found near polynyas (Ross Sea and Ronne) where new ice areas are exported seaward and entrained in the surrounding ice cover. For all months, the results suggest that ~60-70% of the total freeboard is comprised of snow. While the spatial patterns in the freeboard, snow depth, and thickness composite are as expected, the observed seasonality in these variables is surprisingly weak, likely attributable to the competing processes (snowfall, snow ...