Dr. Kwok’s interests include the mass and energy balance of the Arctic and Southern Ocean ice covers and the role of the sea ice in global climate. His work has focused on the analysis of sea ice thickness, small-scale sea ice kinematics, circulation and time-varying gravity over the polar oceans from various spaceborne and airborne instruments. He is a currently a member of the ICESat-2 science team and has served on the science teams of NASA’s ICESat, IceBridge, NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR), and Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) missions.
Ron Kwok
Selected Publications
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, S. Kacimi, M. A. Webster, N. T. Kurtz, and A. A. Petty, (2020) Decay of the snow cover over Arctic sea from ICESat-2 acquisitions during summer melt in 2019, Geophys. Res. Lett., https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088209
Kwok, R., Cunningham, G., Kacimi, S., Webster, M., Kurtz, N., & A. Petty (2020), Decay of the snow cover over Arctic sea ice from ICESat-2 acquisitions during summer melt in 2019, Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2020GL088209.
Kwok, R., S. Kacimi, M. Webster, N. T. Kurtz, A. A. Petty (2020), Arctic snow depth and sea ice thickness from ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2 freeboards: A first examination, 125(3), doi:10.1029/2019jc016008.
Webster, M., Parker, C., Boisvert, L., & R. Kwok (2019), The role of cyclones in snow accumulation on Arctic sea ice, Nat. Comms. 10, 5285, doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13299-8.
Kwok, R., T. Markus, N. T. Kurtz, A. A. Petty, T. A. Neumann, S. L. Farrell. G. F. Cunningham, D. W. Hancock, A. Ivanoff, and J. T. Wimert (2019), Surface height and sea ice freeboard of the Arctic Ocean frosm ICESat-2, Characteristics and early results. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans. doi:10.1029/2019JC015486
Webster, M., Gerland, S., Holland, M., Hunke, E., Kwok, R., Lecomte, O., Massom, R., Perovich, D., & M. Sturm (2018) Snow in the changing sea-ice systems, Nat. Clim. Change, 8, doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0286-7.
Kwok, R. (2018), Arctic sea ice thickness, volume, and multiyear ice coverage: Losses and coupled variability (1958 – 2018). Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (2018) 105005 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aae3ec
Kwok, R. and S. Kacimi (2018), Three years of sea ice freeboard, snow depth, and ice thickness of the Weddell Sea from Operation IceBridge and CryoSat-2, The Cryosphere, 12, 2789–2801. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2789-2018
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, and T. W. K. Armitage (2018), Relationship between specular returns in CryoSat-2 data, surface albedo and summer minimum ice extent, Elem Sci Anth, 6(1):53, doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.311.
Armitage, T. W. K., R. Kwok, A. Thompson, G. Cunningham (2018), Dynamic topography and sea level anomalies of the Southern Ocean: Variability and teleconnections, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 123, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JC013534.
Kwok, R., Kurtz, N. T., Brucker, L., Ivanoff, A., Newman, T., Farrell, S. L., King, J., Howell, S., Webster, M., Paden, J., Leuschen, C., MacGregor, J.A., Richter-Menge, J., Harbeck, J., & M. Tschudi (2017). Intercomparison of snow depth retrievals over Arctic sea ice from radar data acquired by Operation IceBridge. The Cryosphere, 11(6), 2571–2593. doi:10.5194/tc-11-2571-2017.
Kwok R., S. S. Pang, S. Kacimi (2017) Sea ice drift in the Southern Ocean: Regional patterns, variability, and trends. Elem Sci Anth., 5:32. doi:10.1525/elementa.226.
Markus, T, et al. (2016), The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2): Science requirements, concept, and implementation, Remote Sens. Environ., 190, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2016.12.029.
Kwok, R., and J. Morison (2015), Sea surface height and dynamic topography of the ice-covered oceans from CryoSat-2: 2011–2014, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 121, doi:10.1002/2015JC011357
Kwok, R., (2015), Sea ice convergence along the Arctic coasts of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Variability and extremes (1992-2014), Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 7598–7605. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065462
Kwok, R. and G. F. Cunningham (2015), Variability of Arctic sea ice thickness and volume from CryoSat-2, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 373:20140157, doi:10.1098/rsta.2014.0157.
De Steur, L., M. Steele, E. Hansen, J. Morison, I. Polyakov, S. M. Olsen, H. Melling, F. A. McLaughlin, R. Kwok, W. M. Smethie Jr., and P. Schlosser, Hydrographic changes in the Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean with focus on an upper ocean freshwater anomaly between 2007 and 2010, J. Geophys. Res., 118, 4699–4715, doi:10.1002jgrc.20341, 2013.
Morison, J., R. Kwok, C. Peralta-Ferriz, M. Alkire, I. Rigor, R. Andersen, and M. Steele, Changing Arctic Ocean Freshwater Pathways Measured With ICESat and GRACE, Nature, 481, 66-70, doi:10.1038/nature10705, 2012.
Schweiger, A., R. Lindsay, J. Zhang, M. Steele, H. Stern, R. Kwok, Uncertainty in modeled arctic sea ice volume, J. Geophys. Res., 116, C00D06, doi:10.1029/2011JC007084, 2011.