skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Retrievals of Arctic Sea-Ice Volume and Its Trend Significantly Affected by Interannual Snow Variability

Journal Article · · Geophysical Research Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078867· OSTI ID:1544162
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Max Planck Inst. for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  2. Technical Univ. of Denmark, Lyngby (Denmark)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We estimate the uncertainty of satellite-retrieved Arctic sea-ice thickness, sea-ice volume, and their trends stemming from the lack of reliable snow-thickness observations. To illustrate, we simulate a Cryosat2-type ice-thickness retrieval in an ocean-model simulation forced by atmospheric reanalysis, pretending that only freeboard is known as model output. We then convert freeboard to sea-ice thickness using different snow climatologies and compare the resulting sea-ice thickness retrievals to each other and to the real sea-ice thickness of the reanalysis-forced simulation. We postulate that different snow climatologies cause significant differences in the obtained ice thickness and ice volume. Moreover, we show that Arctic ice-volume trends derived from ice-thickness retrievals using any snow-depth climatology are highly unreliable because the estimated trend in ice volume can strongly be influenced by the neglected interannual variability in snow volume.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI ID:
1544162
Journal Information:
Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 21; ISSN 0094-8276
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 16 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (20)

Near-real-time Arctic sea ice thickness and volume from CryoSat-2 journal January 2016
Large-scale surveys of snow depth on Arctic sea ice from Operation IceBridge: ICEBRIDGE SNOW DEPTH ON SEA ICE journal October 2011
CryoSat-2 estimates of Arctic sea ice thickness and volume: CRYOSAT-2 SEA ICE THICKNESS AND VOLUME journal February 2013
A Dynamic Thermodynamic Sea Ice Model journal July 1979
Sensitivity of CryoSat-2 Arctic sea-ice freeboard and thickness on radar-waveform interpretation journal January 2014
Modeling Global Sea Ice with a Thickness and Enthalpy Distribution Model in Generalized Curvilinear Coordinates journal May 2003
Simulated effects of a snow layer on retrieval of CryoSat-2 sea ice freeboard: KWOK; SNOW AND CRYOSAT-2 SEA ICE FREEBOARD journal July 2014
The EUMETSAT sea ice concentration climate data record journal January 2016
Intercomparison of Precipitation Estimates over the Arctic Ocean and Its Peripheral Seas from Reanalyses journal October 2018
Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008 journal January 2009
The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project journal March 1996
The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system journal April 2011
Combined airborne laser and radar altimeter measurements over the Fram Strait in May 2002 journal November 2007
Characteristics of the ocean simulations in the Max Planck Institute Ocean Model (MPIOM) the ocean component of the MPI-Earth system model: Mpiom CMIP5 Ocean Simulations journal June 2013
Intercomparison of snow depth retrievals over Arctic sea ice from radar data acquired by Operation IceBridge journal January 2017
Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data, Version 1 null January 1996
ICESat over Arctic sea ice: Estimation of snow depth and ice thickness journal January 2008
The Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: a research synthesis journal June 2011
Arctic sea-ice evolution as modeled by Max Planck Institute for Meteorology's Earth system model journal April 2013
Snow Depth on Arctic Sea Ice journal June 1999

Cited By (3)

Climate Models as Guidance for the Design of Observing Systems: the Case of Polar Climate and Sea Ice Prediction journal November 2019
Retrieval of Snow Depth over Arctic Sea Ice Using a Deep Neural Network journal December 2019
Climate Models as Guidance for the Design of Observing Systems - The case of Polar Climate and Sea Ice Prediction text January 2020

Similar Records

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ice thickness
snow depth
ice volume
uncertainty
retrieval algorithm
estimation bias