Estimating Arctic sea ice thickness from satellite-based ice history

Kimura, Noriaki; Hasumi, Hiroyasu

doi:10.5194/tc-20-2331-2026

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-2331-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-2331-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

Research article

|

23 Apr 2026

Research article |

| 23 Apr 2026

Estimating Arctic sea ice thickness from satellite-based ice history

Noriaki Kimura and Hiroyasu Hasumi

Data sets

AMSR-E Level 3 product of Daily Polar Brightness Temperatures and Product M. Hori et al. https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20170123-001

AMSR2 Level 3 product of Daily Polar Brightness Temperatures and Product M. Hori et al. https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20170123-003

Gridded Daily Sea Ice Velocity in the Northern Hemisphere N. Kimura https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17694536

Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Velocity N. Kimura and T. Sugimura https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20251126-001

Daily sea ice age data for the entire Northern Hemisphere N. Kimura and H. Hasumi https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17743866

Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Age N. Kimura et al. https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20220527-001

Daily sea ice thickness in the Northern Hemisphere N. Kimura and H. Hasumi https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17685488

Daily mean sea ice draft from moored upward-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) in the Laptev Sea from 2003 to 2016 H. J. Belter et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.912927

ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present J. Muñoz Sabater et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e2161bac

Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Thickness N. Kimura and T. Sugimura https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/dataset/A20260409-001

Short summary

Measuring sea ice thickness is difficult using satellite data, but it is crucial for understanding climate change. This study introduces a new method that estimates ice thickness by tracking where and when sea ice formed and calculating how much it likely grew based on daily weather conditions. The results agreed well with underwater measurements. This method helps map ice thickness across the Arctic and may support estimates of other hard-to-measure sea ice features.