The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 18, issue 2
Articles | Volume 18, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-933-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-933-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 18, issue 2
Research article
 | 
29 Feb 2024
Research article |  | 29 Feb 2024

Melt pond fractions on Arctic summer sea ice retrieved from Sentinel-3 satellite data with a constrained physical forward model

Hannah Niehaus, Larysa Istomina, Marcel Nicolaus, Ran Tao, Aleksey Malinka, Eleonora Zege, and Gunnar Spreen

Data sets

Melt pond fraction on Arctic sea-ice from Sentinel-2 satellite optical imagery (2017-2021) Hannah Niehaus and Gunnar Spreen https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.950885

pectral radiation fluxes, albedo and transmittance from autonomous measurement from Radiation Station 2007R24 at SV Tara in the Arctic Transpolar Drift in 2007 Marcel Nicolaus and Sebastian Gerland https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.945286

Snow height and air temperature on sea ice from Snow Buoy measurements M. Nicolaus et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.875638

Sea ice drift, surface temperature, and barometric pressure on sea ice from Surface Velocity Profiler measurements M. Nicolaus et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.875652

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Short summary
Melt ponds are puddles of meltwater which form on Arctic sea ice in the summer period. They are darker than the ice cover and lead to increased absorption of solar energy. Global climate models need information about the Earth's energy budget. Thus satellite observations are used to monitor the surface fractions of melt ponds, ocean, and sea ice in the entire Arctic. We present a new physically based algorithm that can separate these three surface types with uncertainty below 10 %.
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