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CCI+ Sea Ice ECV CCN2: Drift-Aware Sea Ice Thickness

CCI+ Sea Ice ECV CCN2: Drift-Aware Sea Ice Thickness

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Unlocking Arctic sea ice dynamics: daily drift-aware satellite-derived sea ice thickness maps

  • The polar regions are a hot spot of climate change, and large-scale satellite observations to monitor sea ice decline are important. One of the essential climate variables (ECVs) is sea ice thickness, controlling the heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere.
  • Within the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project, consistent sea ice thickness time series across different satellite altimetry missions (ERS, Envisat, CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3) are generated to observe long-term trends. To provide monthly maps of ice freeboard and thickness, daily trajectories are averaged on a 25 km grid, while each trajectory only represents the ice thickness in the moment of the satellite overflight.
  • But sea ice can drift significantly within one month, especially in areas with typically high drift rates, like in the Beaufort Gyre or in the Fram Strait. Moreover, in the context of climate change, studies suggest that sea ice will become more mobile in the future.
  • Neglecting sea ice drift when generating monthly sea ice thickness maps from satellite altimetry will cause blurring of the spatial distribution of ice thickness. We therefore suggest synergizing sea ice freeboard and thickness information from satellite altimetry with sea ice drift estimates from passive microwave satellite sensors. With our approach, we successively advect individual parcels of satellite altimeter measurements daily over a time span of one month to obtain drift-aware sea ice freeboard and thickness maps. Because of the drift correction, we can also determine sea ice that was overflown by the satellite multiple times. This allows to estimate growth rates and changes in the sea ice thickness distribution due to deformation and thermodynamic ice growth between satellite overflights. With the estimation of sea ice growth, measurements can be corrected for the time offset between the acquisition day and the target day, the day to which all measurements within a month are projected.
  • In this project, we develop daily drift-aware sea ice freeboard and thickness maps, using satellite altimetry data, covering the entire Arctic sea ice domain. These data will be especially useful to study sea ice dynamics as a result of ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Contact

Robert Ricker

Senior Scientist - Tromsø

rori@norceresearch.no
+47 56 10 78 40

Project facts

Name

CCI+ Sea Ice ECV CCN2: Drift-Aware Sea Ice Thickness

Status

Active

Duration

01.02.23 - 28.02.25

Total budget

1.700.000 NOK

Research areas

Research group

Funding

ESA - European Space Agency

Project members

Thomas Lavergne

Samarbeidspartnere

NORCE, METNO