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A Preliminary Investigation of Arctic Sea Ice Negative Freeboard from in-situ Observations and Radar Altimetry

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Abstract

The negative freeboard of sea ice (i.e., the height of ice surface below sea level) with subsequent flooding is widespread in the Southern Ocean, as opposed to the Arctic, due to the relatively thicker ice and thinner snow. In this study, we used the observations of snow and ice thickness from 103 ice mass balance buoys (IMBs) and NASA Operation IceBridge Aircraft Missions to investigate the spatial distribution of negative freeboard of Arctic sea ice. The Result showed that seven IMBs recorded negative freeboards, which were sporadically located in the seas around Northeast Greenland, the Central Arctic Ocean, and the marginal areas of the Chukchi-Beaufort Sea. The observed maximum values of negative freeboard could reach −0.12 m in the seas around Northeast Greenland. The observations from IceBridge campaigns also revealed negative freeboard comparable to those of IMBs in the seas around North Greenland and the Beaufort Sea. We further investigated the large-scale distribution of negative freeboard using NASA CryoSat-2 radar altimeter data, and the result indicates that except for the negative freeboard areas observed by IMBs and IceBridge, there are negative freeboards in other marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean. However, the comparison of the satellite data with the IMB data and IceBridge data shows that the Cryosat-2 data generally overestimate the extent and magnitude of the negative freeboard in the Arctic.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YF C1406104); and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41425003 and 41971084). We would like to thank the NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Data Center for providing IceBridge, CryoSat-2 data and N-ICE2015 data, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Shutong Li, Tingfeng Dou & Cunde Xiao

  2. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Shutong Li & Tingfeng Dou

  3. State Key Laboratory of Land Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Cunde Xiao

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  1. Shutong Li
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Correspondence to Tingfeng Dou.

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Li, S., Dou, T. & Xiao, C. A Preliminary Investigation of Arctic Sea Ice Negative Freeboard from in-situ Observations and Radar Altimetry. J. Ocean Univ. China 20, 307–314 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-021-4380-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-021-4380-5

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