The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 17, issue 9
Articles | Volume 17, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3721-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3721-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 17, issue 9
Research article
 | 
01 Sep 2023
Research article |  | 01 Sep 2023

Assimilating CryoSat-2 freeboard to improve Arctic sea ice thickness estimates

Imke Sievers, Till A. S. Rasmussen, and Lars Stenseng

Model code and software

CICE-Consortium/CICE: CICE Version 6.2.0 (6.2.0) Elizabeth Hunke, Richard Allard, David A. Bailey, Philippe Blain, Anthony Craig, Frederic Dupont, Alice DuVivier, Robert Grumbine, David Hebert, Marika Holland, Nicole Jeffery, Jean-Francois Lemieux, Robert Osinski, Till Rasmussen, Mads Ribergaard, Andrew Roberts, Matthew Turner, Michael Winton, and Stefan Rethmeier https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4671172

NEMO ocean engine Gurvan Madec, Romain Bourdallé-Badie, Jérôme Chanut, Emanuela Clementi, Andrew Coward, Christian Ethé, Doroteaciro Iovino, Dan Lea, Claire Lévy, Tomas Lovato, Nicolas Martin, Sébastien Masson, Silvia Mocavero, Clément Rousset, Dave Storkey, Martin Vancoppenolle, Simon Müeller, George Nurser, Mike Bell, and Guillaume Samson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878122

Download
Short summary
The satellite CryoSat-2 measures freeboard (FB), which is used to derive sea ice thickness (SIT) under the assumption of hydrostatic balance. This SIT comes with large uncertainties due to errors in the observed FB, sea ice density, snow density and snow thickness. This study presents a new method to derive SIT by assimilating the FB into the sea ice model, evaluates the resulting SIT against in situ observations and compares the results to the CryoSat-2-derived SIT without FB assimilation.
Read more