SnowMicroPen Measurements on Sea Ice 2016-2017
Local-scale variations in snow density and layering on Arctic sea ice were characterized using a combination of traditional snow pit and SnowMicroPen (SMP) penetrometer measurements. The SMP profiles provide detailed information about the snow microstructure and stratigraphy and were collected to ev...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://zenodo.org/record/4068349 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4068349 |
| Summary: | Local-scale variations in snow density and layering on Arctic sea ice were characterized using a combination of traditional snow pit and SnowMicroPen (SMP) penetrometer measurements. The SMP profiles provide detailed information about the snow microstructure and stratigraphy and were collected to evaluate coincident airborne and satellite measurements aimed at improving the understanding of inter-annual variability of Arctic snow and sea ice properties. The measurements were acquired during two April field campaigns conducted near the time of maximum snow thickness, coinciding with NASA Operation IceBridge (17 April 2016) and ESA CryoVEx (26 April 2017). In total, 8 survey sites were evaluated within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago near Eureka (80.0°N 85.9°W) and 6 survey sites on the Arctic Ocean (spanning 83.4°N and 86.3°N), on both first (FYI) and multi-year (MYI) sea ice. The SMP measurements were recorded using a SnowMicroPen® 4 penetrometer. In total 613 SMP profiles were recorded on Arctic sea ice. Coincident SMP profiles were made at 26 snow pit locations (20 near Eureka between April 8th-17th 2016, and 6 on the Arctic Ocean between April 11th-13th 2017), to evaluate derived estimates of snow density. Maintaining a horizontal separation of 10 cm, profiles were located behind the snow pit wall in proximity to the manual density cutter measurements. In addition to collecting SMP profiles at snow pit locations to derive density estimates, SMP transect were established to characterize spatial variability in snow microstructure. For Eureka, multi-scale sampling was applied where unidirectional sets of 10 profiles were separated at distances of 0.1, 1, and 10m, in sequence. Where time permitted, additional profiles were completed with 1 m spacing adjacent to the primary transect. An average of 69 SMP profiles were collected per survey site near Eureka (total n=550). It was not possible to execute an identical sampling strategy for the Arctic Ocean sites due to time constraints. Instead, a single set of 10 ... |
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