Arctic Sea Ice Analysis Through Airborne Research

(NOAA Collaborators:Larry Connor)

Improving our knowledge of Arctic sea ice characteristics is critical for understanding the polar climate system. Previous airborne campaigns, such as NASA's Operation IceBridge (2009-2019), have provided high-resolution measurements of Arctic sea ice, including surface elevation, snow depth, and pressure ridge sail height, freeboard and thickness. These observations have increased our knowledge of the Arctic sea ice cover, and the processes that control it. Our project will build upon previous airborne missions through the collection of novel sea ice observations aimed at improving sea ice parameterizations of sea ice characteristics in high-resolution sea ice models. We will participate in the NOAA/NESDIS/SOCD Arctic airborne campaign in Spring 2021. The aircraft will be fitted with an airborne scanning lidar, a snow radar, and a camera system, to collect data along flight lines in the Beaufort, Bering and Chukchi Seas and the Canada Basin. Flights will sample both first-year and multiyear ice sea ice. Specific under-flights of satellites carrying altimeters, including ESA’s CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3a/b, and NASA’s ICESat-2 will be designed so that airborne and satellite acquisitions are simultaneous. Utilizing the airborne observations, we will validate the satellite altimetry data products. Using existing methodologies, we will produce sea ice data products distributed through NOAA ftp, the NOAA PolarWatch data portal, and archived with NCEI.