Inferring the seasonality of sea ice floes in the Weddell Sea using ICESat-2

Gupta, Mukund; Regan, Heather; Koo, Younghyun; Chua, Sean Minhui Tashi; Li, Xueke; Heil, Petra

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1241-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 3

Research article

|

17 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 17 Mar 2025

Inferring the seasonality of sea ice floes in the Weddell Sea using ICESat-2

Mukund Gupta, Heather Regan, Younghyun Koo, Sean Minhui Tashi Chua, Xueke Li, and Petra Heil

Data sets

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Height R. Kwok et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL07.006

Multiyear Ice Concentration, Antarctic, 12.5 km grid, cold seasons 2013-2018 (from satellite) C. Melsheimer et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.909054

Short summary

The sea ice cover is composed of floes, whose shapes set the material properties of the pack. Here, we use a satellite product (ICESat-2) to investigate these floe shapes within the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. We find that floes tend to become smaller during the melt season, while their thickness distribution exhibits different behavior between the western and southern regions of the pack. These metrics will help calibrate models and improve our understanding of sea ice physics across scales.