Ron Kwok

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.

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., 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

  • 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

  • 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., 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.

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