Observing the snow and ice properties in the Arctic coastal waters of the Canadian Beaufort Sea with helicopter-borne Ground-Penetrating Radar, Laser and Electromagnetic sensors

A helicopter-borne Ground-Penetrating-Radar (GPR) has been providing in real-time snow depths and ice thicknesses of low saline ice and complemented the Electromagnetic-Laser and Video-Laser data sets to explain the winter and summer ice and snow properties found in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. In the shallow inshore delta areas where river runoff dilutes the oceanic water such as the Mackenzie Delta, the GPR and EM together can determine in winter the floating, grounded ice conditions from the ice frozen to the bottom where the EM on its own only indicates areas where the ice is attached to the frozen mud layer. In these low saline areas the GPR can measure both the snow depth and ice thickness and provide an estimate of the freshwater river plume layer trapped inshore behind the lad-fast shear zone. Overlain this survey data of 2010 on SAR imagery provides a means to validate the ice signature seen in satellite imagery. During the summer of 2009, the helicopter-borne sensors have observed the break-up of the Arctic pack ice by long period ocean surface waves generated in open water region north of the Bering Strait. The waves penetrating the Beaufort Sea pack ice up to 300km, breaking up the pack ice into less than 100m floes. All data and reports of the helicopter survey and publications are available http://www.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/ocean/seaice/public.html and associated FTP site.