Comparison of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness from Satellites, Aircraft, and PIOMAS Data

In this study, six Arctic sea ice thickness products are compared: the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder-extended (APP-x), ICESat, CryoSat-2, SMOS, NASA IceBridge aircraft flights, and the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS). The satellite products are based on three different retrie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2016-09, Vol.8 (9), p.713-713
Main Authors: Wang, Xuanji, Key, Jeffrey, Kwok, Ron, Zhang, Jinlun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aircraft
APP-x
Archipelagoes
Arctic
Arctic regions
CryoSat-2
Energy budgets
Freeboard
Ice cover
Ice thickness
IceBridge
ICESat
Microwaves
PIOMAS
Remote sensing
satellite
Satellites
Sea ice
sea ice thickness
SMOS
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Summary:In this study, six Arctic sea ice thickness products are compared: the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder-extended (APP-x), ICESat, CryoSat-2, SMOS, NASA IceBridge aircraft flights, and the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS). The satellite products are based on three different retrieval methods: an energy budget approach, measurements of ice freeboard, and the relationship between passive microwave brightness temperatures and thin ice thickness. Inter-comparisons are done for the periods of overlap from 2003 to 2013. Results show that ICESat sea ice is thicker than APP-x and PIOMAS overall, particularly along the north coast of Greenland and Canadian Archipelago. The relative differences of APP-x and PIOMAS with ICESat are -0.48 m and -0.31 m, respectively. APP-x underestimates thickness relative to CryoSat-2, with a mean difference of -0.19 m. The biases for APP-x, PIOMAS, and CryoSat-2 relative to IceBridge thicknesses are 0.18 m, 0.18 m, and 0.29 m. The mean difference between SMOS and CryoSat-2 for 0~1 m thick ice is 0.13 m in March and -0.24 m in October. All satellite-retrieved ice thickness products and PIOMAS overestimate the thickness of thin ice (1 m or less) compared to IceBridge for which SMOS has the smallest bias (0.26 m). The spatial correlation between the datasets indicates that APP-x and PIOMAS are the most similar, followed by APP-x and CryoSat-2.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs8090713