The 2003-04 Sea Ice Season at Barrow as Seen by Land-Based Radar

The objective was to determine the position of the landfast sea ice edge and its morphology throughout the 2003-04 sea ice season near Barrow using a land-based 10 kW, X-band (3 cm) marine radar mounted on a building near the beach at the Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation Naval Artcic Research Laboratory (UIC-NARL). This data would then be used to help understand how landfast ice attaches to coast and what causes it to breakaway. An improved understanding together with real-time data available on the internet will provide more information for the safety of whalers, Native people, and the development of nearshore operations. X-band radar does not discriminate well between level ice and open water, since both areas are characterized by very low back-scatter, but it detects ice floes and rough ice that contain surfaces facing towards the radar. It is very effective at monitoring nearshore sea ice motion in a time series of data. Landfast ice can change very rapidly with break-offs and ice shoves occurring in a matter of hours and nearshore pack ice motion can reverse several times in one day. We were able to monitor these changes by the animation of radar images spaced at five-minute intervals. A very similar land-based radar was installed on the beach approximately 500m further towards Barrow between 1973 and 1979 (Shapiro and Metzner, 1991). In a comparison with this earlier study, the 2003-04 season was noted to be much more dynamic and there was less observed pack ice. In conjunction with field measurements, it was also observed that a stable fast ice edge does not necessarily correlate with a grounded ridge, contrary to the World Meteorological Organization's definition of fast ice.