Ice and Snow Thickness Variability and Change in the High Arctic Ocean Observed by In Situ Measurements

• Main Authors: Haas, C, Beckers, J, King, J, Silis, A, Stroeve, J, Wilkinson, J, Notenboom, B, Schweiger, A, Hendricks, S
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Ellesmere Island; North Pole; Lincoln Sea; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10037840/1/Haas_et_al-2017-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf; https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10037840/

In April 2017, we collected unique, extensive in situ data of sea ice and snow thickness. At 10 sampling sites, located under a CryoSat-2 overpass, between Ellesmere Island and 87.1°N mean and modal total ice thicknesses ranged between 2 to 3.4 m and 1.8 to 2.9 m, respectively. Coincident snow thicknesses ranged between 0.3 to 0.47 m (mean) and 0.1 to 0.5 m (mode). The profile spanned the complete multiyear ice zone in the Lincoln Sea, into the first-year ice zone farther north. Complementary snow thickness measurements near the North Pole showed a mean thickness of 0.31 m. Compared with scarce measurements from other years, multiyear ice was up to 0.75 m thinner than in 2004, but not significantly different from 2011 and 2014. We found excellent agreement with a commonly used snow climatology and with published long-term ice thinning rates. There was reasonable agreement with CryoSat-2 thickness retrievals.