Snow depth on Arctic sea ice from ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2
Abstract
Prior to the launch of ICESat-2 (IS-2), the potential to produce basin-scale estimates of snow depth by differencing freeboard heights from CryoSat-2 (CS-2) and IS-2 was examined in Kwok and Markus [2018]. Lidar freeboards are now available in ATL10 - the sea ice data product provided by the IS-2 mission. With CS-2 and IS-2 freeboards, we have been able to construct monthly fields of snow depth on Arctic sea ice for an entire growth season - from the beginning of the IS-2 science mission in October 2018 through to the onset of melt in 2019. The monthly fields clearly show increases in snow depth from mid-October through April, and the spatial contrast in snow depth distributions over seasonal and multi-year ice. Here, we show comparisons of the snow depth estimates with reconstructions from ERA-interim and ERA5, and available estimates from airborne and field measurements. Also, we discuss the variability in these estimates associated with the: (1) lack of time-space coincidence of the freeboard data sets, (2) uncertainties stemming from the snow density used in the conversion to snow depth, and (3) potential impact of snow salinity on radar freeboard.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.C42A..08K
- Keywords:
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- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0726 Ice sheets;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 4556 Sea level: variations and mean;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL