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Datasets / Ifremer

Sea Ice Freeboard, Thickness and Snow Depth (Arctic and Antarctic)

Sea Ice

The main objective is to provide the Sea Ice Thickness (SIT) essential climate variable (ECV). The SIT depends itself on the sea ice freeboard (FB), the snow depth (SD), and their densities relatively to the water density. The FB and the SD can be measured by altimetry. The FB can be measured by one altimeter [Laxon et al., 2013] whereas the SD measurement is based on bi-frequencies altimetry. The solution to estimate the SD relies on CryoSat-2 Ku altimeter and Saral Ka altimeter [Guerreiro et al., 2016]. The snow depth is thus limited by the lower satellite orbit (bellow 81.5°N/S for Saral) and the common coverage period (from 2013 for Saral). These products provide the 4 following parameters and their uncertainties:

  • radar-freeboard,
  • ice-freeboard,
  • snow-depth and
  • sea ice thickness, For each products, the data are provided on a monthly basis and onto an EASE2 grid with a 12,5 km pixel size resolution for all winter months (November-April for the Arctic and May-October for Antarctica). To ensure a better consistency, a smoothing filter is applied for each grid cell where the mask indicates the presence of sea ice. Two versions of these products are delivered, with respectively a 25km and a 50km filtering radius.

Data and resources

Additional information

Date (publication)2017-11-17
StatusonGoing
Update frequencyasNeeded
Metadata languagefr
LicenseAucune condition ne s’applique
Source metadataISO 19115 XML
Last updated2026-11-04
Created2026-11-04
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