Snow depth and sea ice thickness derived from a SIMBA buoy (FMI0606) temperature measurement in the Young sound, eastern Greenland land-fast ice zone for the 2020/2021 ice season

• Main Authors: Cheng, Bin, Sejr, Mikael K, Cheng, Yubing, Winding, Mie Hylstofte Sichlau
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2023
• Subjects: Arctic Ocean; ice thickness; INTAROS; Integrated Arctic observation system; mass balance; snow depth; temperature gradient; Arctic; Greenland; Annals of Glaciology; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.959824; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.959824

A thermistor string-based snow and ice mass balance apparatus (SIMBA) was deployed in the land-fast sea ice zone in Young sound, eastern Greenland, on 28 October 2020, and operated successfully until 10 April 2021. The SIMBA was manufactured by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) (Jackson et al., 2013). Two types of temperatures were measured by the SIMBA. The temperature of air, snow, ice, and water where SIMBA thermistor sensors were placed, is named as SIMBA_ET. The temperature reading after each thermistor sensor was applied with an identical amount of heat, is named SIMBA_HT. The amount of heat was controlled by the duration of heating, often configured as the 30s and 120s, respectively. The SIMBA_ET and SIMBA_HT were measured four times per day and one time per day, respectively. So SIMBA_HT(30) and SIMBA_HT(120) represent the sensor temperature changes in air, snow, ice, and water after a heating cycle of the 30s and 120s, respectively. The length of the SIMBA thermistor chain is 4.8m. There are 240 thermistor sensors (DS28EA00, accurate to +/- 0.0625°C) with 0.02 m spacing. Combined with a SIMBA algorithm (Cheng et al., 2020) and manual analyses, snow depth and ice thickness can be derived from SIMBA_ET and SMMBA_HT observations. Overall, the measurement accuracy was 0.02 m for both the snow depth and ice thickness. The submitted data package includes 6 data files, i.e., SIMBA GPS position; snow depth; ice thickness; SIMBA_ET, as well as in situ snow depth and ice thickness measured by the local personnel.