Articles | Volume 17, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-127-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-127-2023
Research article
 | 
13 Jan 2023
Research article |  | 13 Jan 2023

Winter Arctic sea ice thickness from ICESat-2: upgrades to freeboard and snow loading estimates and an assessment of the first three winters of data collection

Alek A. Petty, Nicole Keeney, Alex Cabaj, Paul Kushner, and Marco Bagnardi

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Cited articles

Aagaard, K. and Carmack, E. C.: The role of sea ice and other fresh water in the Arctic circulation, J. Geophys. Res., 94, 14485–14498, https://doi.org/10.1029/JC094iC10p14485, 1989. 
Bagnardi, M., Kurtz, N. T., Petty, A. A., and Kwok, R.: Sea Surface Height Anomalies of the Arctic Ocean From ICESat-2: A First Examination and Comparisons With CryoSat-2, Geophys. Res. Lett., 48, e2021GL093155, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093155, 2021. 
Barrett, A. P., Stroeve, J. C., and Serreze, M. C.: Arctic Ocean Precipitation From Atmospheric Reanalyses and Comparisons With North Pole Drifting Station Records, J. Geophys. Res.-Oceans, 125, e2019JC015415, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JC015415, 2020. 
Batrak, Y. and Müller, M.: On the warm bias in atmospheric reanalyses induced by the missing snow over Arctic sea-ice, Nat. Commun., 10, 4170, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11975-3, 2019. 
Breivik, L. A., Eastwood, S., and Lavergne, T.: Use of C-Band Scatterometer for Sea Ice Edge Identification, IEEE T. Geosci. Remote, 50, 2669–2677, https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2012.2188898, 2012 (data available at: ftp://osisaf.met.no/prod/ice/type/, last access: 1 May 2021). 
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Short summary
We present upgrades to winter Arctic sea ice thickness estimates from NASA's ICESat-2. Our new thickness results show better agreement with independent data from ESA's CryoSat-2 compared to our first data release, as well as new, very strong comparisons with data collected by moorings in the Beaufort Sea. We analyse three winters of thickness data across the Arctic, including 50 cm thinning of the multiyear ice over this 3-year period.
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