Can we use new techniques to measure pan-Arctic sea ice thickness from the satellite radar altimeter Cryosat-2 during summer months, for the first time?

Living Planet Fellowship research project carried out by Jack Landy. Arctic-SummIT will deliver, for the first time, a sea ice thickness product during summer months from the ESA Cryosat-2 satellite. As the extent of Arctic sea ice has declined at unprecedented speed over the past few decades, we have been able to view only limited …

Accurate measurements of the sea ice area and thickness with the aid of ranging data provided by missions such as CryoSat-2 are crucial for the understanding of the transformations occurring in the Arctic, in light of observed changes in seasonality, increase of winter air temperatures and delays in freeze-up. An important factor in the calculation …

Arctic sea ice extent during the summer months has declined considerably over the satellite record. Surface melt ponds, which form on sea ice during the spring, play an important role in the decay of sea ice and seasonal reduction in ice extent because they influence how much solar radiation is absorbed into the sea ice-ocean …

Sea ice in key Arctic coastal regions is thinning at a rate of 70–100% faster than previously thought. These values, reported in a paper recently published in The Cryosphere, are derived when the sea ice thickness in the period 2002–2018 is calculated using new snow data with more realistic variability and trends. Results are outcomes …

A paper published in Nature describes a new approach for removing the pesky problem of dazzle from surface meltwater to yield the first ever continuous, year-round, altimetry measurements of sea-ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean. Artificial intelligence techniques have been applied to CryoSat data in the Arctic to distinguish, during the summer period, the melting …