Aerial observations of the evolution of ice surface conditions during summer
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In the summer of 1998, a program of aerial photography was carried out at the main site of the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) program at altitudes ranging from 1220 to 1830 m as mentioned in this paper.Abstract:
[1] During spring and summer, the Arctic pack ice cover undergoes a dramatic change in surface conditions, evolving from a uniform, reflective surface to a heterogeneous mixture of bare ice, melt ponds, and leads. This transformation is accompanied by a significant decrease in areally averaged, integrated albedo. The key factors contributing to this reduction in albedo are the melting of the snow cover, the formation and growth of the melt ponds, and the increase in the open water fraction. To document these changes and enable quantification of the evolution of the ponds throughout the melt season, a program of aerial photography was carried out at the main site of the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) program. A modified square pattern, 50 km on a side, surrounding the SHEBA site was flown at altitudes ranging from 1220 to 1830 m. Twelve of these aerial survey photography flights were completed between 20 May and 4 October 1998. The flights took place at approximately weekly intervals at the height of the melt season, with occasional gaps as long as 3 weeks during August and September due to persistent low clouds and fog. In addition, flights on 17 May and 25 July were flown in a closely spaced pattern designed to provide complete photo coverage of a 10-km square centered on the SHEBA main site. Images from all flights were scanned at high resolution and archived on CD-ROMs. Using personal computer image processing software, we have measured ice concentration, melt pond coverage, statistics on size and shape of melt ponds, lead fraction, and lead perimeter for the summer melt season. The ponds began forming in early June, and by the height of the melt season in early August the pond fraction exceeded 0.20. The temporal evolution of pond fraction displayed a rapid increase in mid-June, followed by a sharp decline 1 week later. After the decline, the pond fraction gradually increased until mid-August when the ponds began to freeze. By mid-September the surface of virtually all of the ponds had frozen. The open water fraction varied between 0.02 and 0.05 from May through the end of July. In early August the open water fraction jumped to 0.20 in just a few days owing to ice divergence. Melt ponds were ubiquitous during summer, with number densities increasing from 1000 to 5000 ponds per square kilometer between June and August.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Impact of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice simulations from 1990 to 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a model suitable for forecasting the presence of melt ponds based on sea ice conditions and incorporated it into the Los Alamos CICE sea ice model, the sea ice component of several IPCC climate models.
Journal ArticleDOI
Seasonality of spectral albedo and transmittance as observed in the Arctic Transpolar Drift in 2007
Marcel Nicolaus,Marcel Nicolaus,Sebastian Gerland,Stephen R. Hudson,S. Hanson,Jari Haapala,Donald K. Perovich +6 more
TL;DR: The first continuous and high-resolution record of spectral albedo and transmittance of snow and sea ice in the Arctic Ocean over an entire summer season is presented in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Level-ice melt ponds in the Los Alamos sea ice model, CICE
TL;DR: In this article, a new parameterization for the CICE sea ice model was developed for the level ice tracer available in the model, where the ponds are carried as tracers on the area of each thickness category, thus limiting their spatial extent based on the simulated sea ice topography.
Journal ArticleDOI
Seasonal evolution of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice
Melinda Webster,Ignatius Rigor,Donald K. Perovich,Donald K. Perovich,Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge,C. Polashenski,Bonnie Light +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used panchromatic satellite imagery paired with airborne and in situ data to evaluate the seasonal evolution of melt ponds in the Arctic Ocean and found that first-year and multi-year sea ice had comparable mean snow depths, but multiyear ice had 0−5 cm deep snow covering ∼37% of its surveyed area.
Incorporation of a physically-based melt pond scheme into the sea ice component of a climate model
Daniel Feltham,Daniela Flocco +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a melt pond evolution theory and incorporated this theory into the Los Alamos CICE sea ice model, which has required us to include the refreezing of melt ponds.
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Journal ArticleDOI
Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean
Taneil Uttal,Judith A. Curry,Miles G. McPhee,Donald K. Perovich,Richard E. Moritz,James A. Maslanik,Peter S. Guest,Harry L. Stern,James A. Moore,Rene Turenne,Andreas Heiberg,Mark C. Serreze,Donald P. Wylie,Ola Persson,Clayton A. Paulson,Christopher Halle,James H. Morison,Patricia A. Wheeler,Alexander Makshtas,Harold Welch,Matthew D. Shupe,Janet M. Intrieri,Knut Stamnes,Ronald W. Lindsey,Robert Pinkel,W. Scott Pegau,Timothy P. Stanton,Thomas C. Grenfeld +27 more
TL;DR: The Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) project as discussed by the authors collected ocean, ice, and atmospheric datasets over a full annual cycle that could be used to understand the processes controlling surface heat exchanges.