Sea-ice thickness in the coastal northeastern Chukchi Sea from moored ice-profiling sonar

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: YASUSHI FUKAMACHI, DAISUKE SIMIZU, KAY I. OHSHIMA, HAJO EICKEN, ANDREW R. MAHONEY, KATSUSHI IWAMOTO, ERIKA MORIYA, SOHEY NIHASHI
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2017
• Subjects: sea ice; sea-ice geophysics; sea-ice growth and decay; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Chukchi Sea; Beaufort Sea; Chukchi; Journal of Glaciology; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2017.56; https://doaj.org/article/62acd524634d49f89378d783a6089d26

Time series ice-draft data were obtained from moored ice-profiling sonar (IPS), in the coastal northeastern Chukchi Sea during 2009/10. Time series data show seasonal growth of sea-ice draft, occasionally interrupted by coastal polynya. The sea-ice draft distribution indicates a slightly lower abundance of thick, deformed ice compared with the eastern Beaufort Sea. In January, a rapid increase in the abundance of thick ice coincided with a period of minimal drift indicating compaction again the coast and dynamical thickening. The overall mean draft and corresponding derived thickness are 1.27 and 1.38 m, respectively. The evolution of modal ice thickness observed can be explained mostly by thermodynamic growth. The derived ice thicknesses are used to estimate heat losses based on ERA-interim data. Heat losses from the raw, 1 s IPS data are ~50 and 100% greater than those calculated using IPS data averaged over spatial scales of ~20 and 100 km, respectively. This finding demonstrates the importance of subgrid-scale ice-thickness distribution for heat-loss calculation. The heat-loss estimate based on thin ice data derived from AMSR-E data corresponds well with that from the 1 s observed ice-thickness data, validating heat-loss estimates from the AMSR-E thin ice-thickness algorithm.