Impacts of air fraction increase on Arctic sea ice density, freeboard, and thickness estimation during the melt season

Salganik, Evgenii; Crabeck, Odile; Fuchs, Niels; Hutter, Nils; Anhaus, Philipp; Landy, Jack Christopher

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1259-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1259-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-1259-2025

© 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

Impacts of air fraction increase on Arctic sea ice density, freeboard, and thickness estimation during the melt season

Evgenii Salganik, Odile Crabeck, Niels Fuchs, Nils Hutter, Philipp Anhaus, and Jack Christopher Landy

Data sets

First-year sea-ice salinity, temperature, density, oxygen and hydrogen isotope composition from the main coring site (MCS-FYI) during MOSAiC legs 1 to 4 in 2019/2020 M. Oggier et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.956732

Sea-ice salinity, temperature, density, oxygen and hydrogen isotope composition from the coring sites during MOSAiC leg 5 in August-September 2020 E. Salganik et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.971266

Ridge ice density data MOSAiC Leg 4 (PS122/4) E. Salganik et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.953865

Merged grids of sea-ice or snow freeboard from helicopter-borne laser scanner during the MOSAiC expedition, version 1 N. Hutter et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.950896

Sea-ice draft during the MOSAiC expedition 2019/20 C. Katlein et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.945846

Magnaprobe snow and melt pond depth measurements from the 2019-2020 MOSAiC expedition P. Itkin et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.937781

Snowpit raw data collected during the MOSAiC expedition A. R. Macfarlane et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.935934

Temperature and heating induced temperature difference measurements from Digital Thermistor Chains (DTCs) during MOSAiC 2019/2020 E. Salganik et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.964023

Helicopter-borne RGB orthomosaics and photogrammetric Digital Elevation Models from the MOSAiC Expedition N. Neckel et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.949433

Melt pond bathymetry of the MOSAiC floe derived by photogrammetry - spatially fully resolved pond depth maps of an Arctic sea ice floe N. Fuchs and G. Birnbaum https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.964520

The Eurasian Arctic Ocean along the MOSAiC drift (2019-2020): Core hydrographic parameters k. Schulz et al. https://doi.org/10.18739/A21J9790B

Year-round Arctic sea ice thickness from CryoSat-2 Baseline-D Level 1b observations 2010-2020 J. Landy and G. Dawson https://doi.org/10.5285/d8c66670-57ad-44fc-8fef-942a46734ecb

Second-year sea-ice salinity, temperature, density, oxygen and hydrogen isotope composition from the main coring site (MCS-SYI) during MOSAiC legs 1 to 4 in 2019/2020 M. Oggier et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.959830

Snow depth and sea ice thickness derived from the measurements of SIMBA buoys deployed in the Arctic Ocean during the Legs 1a, 1, and 3 of the MOSAiC campaign in 2019-2020 R. Lei et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.938244

Model code and software

Summer sea ice density for MOSAiC E. Salganik https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14712483

Short summary

To measure Arctic ice thickness, we often check how much ice sticks out of the water. This method depends on knowing the ice's density, which drops significantly in summer. Our study, validated with sonar and laser data, shows that these seasonal changes in density can complicate melt measurements. We stress the importance of considering these density changes for more accurate ice thickness readings.