Long term satellite record of Arctic sea ice thickness reveals slower sea ice loss than expected while confirming present day ocean mass changes and their contribution to sea level rise
Abstract
Arctic and Antarctic sea ice volumes are changing in response to anthropogenic climate change. It is essential to quantify precisely these changes in order to evaluate the feedback on the polar weather and climate, as well as to assess the associated impacts on the polar communities and ecosystems. Another major interest in monitoring precisely polar sea ice changes is that, when combined with ocean in situ salinity measurements, they provide an independent estimate of the ocean mass changes and their contribution to sea level rise.
The quantification of sea ice volume changes relies on repeated observations of sea ice concentrations and sea ice thickness. Unfortunately, past observations of sea ice thickness are too sparse in time and space to allow long-term global accurate estimate in sea ice volume changes. This is particularly true in the Arctic where sea ice thickness has undergone large changes in the recent decades. In this presentation we report recent advances in combining data from different satellite radar altimeters to build long term circumpolar Arctic sea ice thickness record (> 15 years) and to derive long term arctic sea ice volume changes. We discuss these recent results and propose on this basis an update of recent estimates of the long term global sea ice changes. Finally, we combine the updated global sea ice changes estimates with ocean in situ salinity measurements and analyse the constraint it places on estimates of the ocean mass changes and sea level rise.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.C21A..01M
- Keywords:
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- 0726 Ice sheets;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0728 Ice shelves;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE