Drift-aware sea ice thickness maps from satellite remote sensing

Ricker, Robert; Lavergne, Thomas; Hendricks, Stefan; Paul, Stephan; Down, Emily; Killie, Mari Anne; Bocquet, Marion

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-3785-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-3785-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-3785-2025

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

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

16 Sep 2025

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 16 Sep 2025

Drift-aware sea ice thickness maps from satellite remote sensing

Robert Ricker, Thomas Lavergne, Stefan Hendricks, Stephan Paul, Emily Down, Mari Anne Killie, and Marion Bocquet

Data sets

Drift-aware sea ice thickness maps from satellite remote sensing R. Ricker et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14733132

OSI SAF Global Low Resolution Sea Ice Drift Data Record 1991-2020 (v1, 2022) OSI-455 https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0012

OSI SAF Global Sea Ice Concentration Climate Data Record 1978-2020 (v3.0, 2022) OSI-450-a https://doi.org/10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0013

Sea ice thickness datasets from airborne measurements 2007-2017 R. Ricker et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17061879

Airborne sea ice parameters during the IceBird Winter 2019 campaign in the Arctic Ocean, Version 2 A. Jutila et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.966057

Model code and software

Drift-Awareness for Sea Ice Altimetry (DriftAware-SIAlt) R. Ricker https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14732875

Video supplement

Animated DA-SIT time series from 2019–2020 R. Ricker https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14736322

Co-editor-in-chief

This manuscript presents a significant step forward in presenting a new method to combine extensive satellite data (ice thickness retrievals from radar altimetry in this case) that were accumulated over a long time of one month. As the sea ice can move several hundred kilometers during this time period, averaging data without correcting for drift can significantly blur the results. With the new method, only data that have remained in the same sea ice regime are averaged. The method has received widespread attention, and the audience in the recent ESA Living Planet Symposium mentioned and recognized this work during the public discussion. The community is aware of this work and I am convinced that numerous data providers will implement the method shortly.