Evaluation of Operation IceBridge quick-look snow depth estimates on sea ice

We evaluate Operation IceBridge (OIB) ‘quick-look’ (QL) snow depth on sea ice retrievals using in situ measurements taken over immobile first-year ice (FYI) and multi-year ice (MYI) during March of 2014. Good agreement was found over undeformed FYI (-4.5 cm mean bias) with reduced agreement over def...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: King, Joshua, Howell, Stephen, Derksen, Chris, Rutter, Nick, Toose, Peter, Beckers, Justin, Haas, Christian, Kurtz, Nathan, Richter-Menge, Jacqueline
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union 2015
Subjects:
F800 Physical and Terrestrial Geographical and Environmental Sciences
Sea ice
Online Access:https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/24012/
https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL066389
https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/24012/1/King_et_al-2015-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Description
Summary:We evaluate Operation IceBridge (OIB) ‘quick-look’ (QL) snow depth on sea ice retrievals using in situ measurements taken over immobile first-year ice (FYI) and multi-year ice (MYI) during March of 2014. Good agreement was found over undeformed FYI (-4.5 cm mean bias) with reduced agreement over deformed FYI (-6.6 cm mean bias). Over MYI, the mean bias was -5.7 cm but 54% of retrievals were discarded by the OIB retrieval process as compared to only 10% over FYI. Footprint scale analysis revealed a root mean square error (RMSE) of 6.2 cm over undeformed FYI with RMSE of 10.5 cm and 17.5 cm in the more complex deformed FYI and MYI environments. Correlation analysis was used to demonstrate contrasting retrieval uncertainty associated with spatial aggregation and ice surface roughness.

Similar Items