06/21/22 IceBridge Observations of Sea Ice Thickness, Structure, and Volume Change: Bringing a NOAA Viewpoint Update Summary: Jan 19, 2011 PI: Dave McAdoo, IceBridge Science Team, [email protected] Co-I: Laurence N. Connor, Collaborators:Sinead.L. Farrell, P. Clemente-Colon General Science Focus : Employ IceBridge observations to improve ICESat, Envisat and Cryosat-2 time series of sea ice freeboard estimates. Divine ice structure and thickness in the Arctic Ocean. IceBridge will enhance the synoptic, time-dependent mappings of sea ice thickness provided by satellite altimetry from Envisat and CryoSat-2 as well as ICESat (for recent past) & ICESat-2 (future) Figure 1 Research Activities “A first comparison of CryoSat-2 and ICEBridge altimetry from April 20, 2010 over Arctic Sea Ice” by L. N. Connor et al, presented at AGU, IceBridge Poster Session, Dec 2010 [Fig 1] Updated Connor et al. paper to be given at the ESA Cryosat-2 CVRT meeting, Feb 2011. Collaborative work underway with S. Ferguson & S. Etieff at Sanders Geophysics Ltd (SGL) plus other IST members on using three-component gravity produced by AIRGrav system (SGL) to estimate along-track geoid slopes for IceBridge underflights of Envisat, CryoSat & (!) ICESat over sea ice. Programmatic Work As the IST member from NOAA: coordinating across the agency, e.g., with members of NOAA’s Arctic Priority Objective Team (e.g., J. Key, ), National Ice Center ( P. Clemente-Colon), NOAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) program* (B Weatherhead) et al** to communicate emerging IceBridge sea ice science requirements, to find synergies & commonalities. NOAA’s major needs in the area of Sea Ice (and Marine) Forecasting include operational and seasonal forecasting for marine shipping and navigation etc. Other articulated key elements include array of sea ice thickness (and met) buoys, more and better airborne reconnaissance of sea ice conditions, including accurate estimates of ice elevations, snow thickness ; ocean heat content, etc [ plus operational access to LIDAR measurements for sea ice thickness determination]. Strategies in nutshell: (1) Repeat (near-repeat along new 30-day ground-track) series of Envisat RA-2 IceBridge Sea Ice 7 ( Apr 20, 2010)