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Trends in sea ice thickness/volume are another important indicator of Arctic climate change. While sea ice thickness observations are sparse, here we utilize the ocean and sea ice model, PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003), to visualize November sea ice thickness and volume from 1979 to 2021. Updated for November 2021.
Current Arctic sea ice thickness derived from weekly sea ice thickness maps based on CryoSat-2/SMOS data fusion (Level 4, Version 2.4; Ricker et al. 2017) and its difference compared to the previous year. This graphic will only be updated during winter months (October-April), which is when satellite estimates of sea ice thickness are available. Updated for December 9-15, 2021.
Current simulated (PIOMAS; Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) sea ice thickness and anomalies (1981-2010 baseline) updated for November 2021.
Current Arctic sea ice thickness derived from ICESat-2 (L4 Monthly Gridded Sea Ice Thickness, Version 1; Petty et al. 2021) and its difference compared to the previous year. This graphic will only be updated during winter months (September-April), which is when satellite estimates of sea ice thickness are available. Updated for April 2021.
Latest PIOMAS (model; Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) sea ice volume (SIV) across the Arctic (updated for November 2021).
Latest PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) simulated sea ice volume (SIV) across the Arctic (updated for November 2021).
Latest PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) simulated sea ice thickness (SIT) across the Arctic (updated through November 2021).
Trends in sea ice thickness are another important indicator of Arctic climate change. While sea ice thickness observations are sparse, here we utilize the ocean and sea ice model, PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003), to visualize mean sea ice thickness from 1979 to 2020. Updated through November 2021.
Mean Arctic sea-ice thickness for each year from 2011 to 2020 from CryoSat-2 (ESA CCI Climate Data Record (CDRv2), ESA CCI Interim Climate Data Record (ICDRv2)). Satellite-derived observations of sea-ice thickness are not available during the melt season. Updated November 2021.
Trends in sea ice thickness/volume are another important indicator of Arctic climate change. While sea ice thickness observations are sparse, here we utilize the ocean and sea ice model, PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003), to visualize November sea ice thickness from 1979 to 2021. Sea ice less than 1.5 meters is masked out (black) to emphasize the loss of thicker, older ice. Updated through November 2021.
Refereed/Peer-Reviewed Publications:
[2] Labe, Z.M., Y. Peings, and G. Magnusdottir (2018), Contributions of ice thickness to the atmospheric response from projected Arctic sea ice loss, Geophysical Research Letters, DOI:10.1029/2018GL078158
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[Plain Language Summary][Arctic Today]
[1] Labe, Z.M., G. Magnusdottir, and H.S. Stern (2018), Variability of Arctic sea ice thickness using PIOMAS and the CESM Large Ensemble, Journal of Climate, DOI:10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0436.1
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More real-time Arctic products are available:
All of the Python 3.7 code used to generate these figures are available from my GitHub account. Most scripts use data sets that are generated via ftp retrieval.
*These figures may be freely distributed (with credit).