Arctic Sea Ice

Mission possible

The melting season has just about started (no, I'm not calling the max), but already scientists are out there in different parts of the Arctic doing their thing. Currently there are two eye-catching missions being carried out, both having to do with measuring ice thickness to validate satellite data.

The European Space Agency has two simultaneous and overlapping campaigns currently in operation: SMOS ice 2014 and CryoVEx2014. Both missions can be followed on this ESA blog, which contains a lot of interesting information and some awesome images. Take for instance this one:

image courtesy of Stefan Hendricks (AWI)

That's the Norwegian Research Vessel Lance that has left Svalbard last week and is now sailing towards the Barentsz Sea, taking ice thickness measurements along the way using a range of different techniques (including a helicopter).

Notice those melt ponds on the ice, despite the time of year (edit: Stefan Hendricks who took this picture informs me in the comment section below that these are "not melt ponds, but spots of bare thin ice"). Svalbard just experienced the warmest February on record:

If only I were smart...

It seems that a bunch of data from the NASA IceBridge Mission has been put online by NSIDC:

IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look

The NASA IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look data set is an evaluation product containing derived geophysical data products retrieved over the Arctic sea ice cover from 14 March to 02 April 2012 using the IceBridge Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), Snow Radar, Digital Mapping System (DMS), and KT19 pyrometer. This quick look product is experimental and is designed to be applicable for time-sensitive projects such as sea ice forecasting. The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded campaigns, are stored in ASCII text files, and are available via FTP.

Access the IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look product.

Feedback on this product can be submitted to [email protected].

This could be another clue that tells us something about the thickness of the ice and what we might expect could happen this melting season. Unfortunately, I totally lack the skills and knowledge to work with these files (even if they are .txt files that I actually know how to open), but maybe some of the commenters find it interesting enough to take some time to make sense of the files?

UPDATE:

Commenter deconstruct has visualized the IceBridge flight data onto a NSIDC Polar Stereographic Grid (read more on it in his comment below):