Operation IceBridge (Version 2)

Organization

NASA Operation IceBridge Program Office, Goddard Space Flight Center

Principal contact

Dr. Nathan Kurtz and the OIB Program Office

Project web site

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/

Methodology

Scanning Lidar Altimeter, Snow Radar, Cameras

Location

Arctic Ocean

Time interval

2009-2013

Data processing notes

All flights with usable data are combined for each campaign. Annual campaigns are conducted in the appropriate spring based either in Greenaland or Punta Arenas, Chile..

The 'Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Ice Thickness' data product from NSIDC was used to form 50-km clusters, combining data from more than one flight if the flights were less than 10 days apart. The spacing of the point thickness estimates is approximately 25 m. The original data set includes a variable for the uncertainty in the estimated ice thickness that is used to select points with an uncertainty of less than 1 m for very thin ice up to 2 m for ice greater than 4 m thick. The maximum uncertainty in the point measurements included in the clusters is 2 m. Clusters were required to have 500 or more point samples to be retained and some clusters have as many as 7000 points. The average is 1670 points.

In the summary file the minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation is given for the snow depth, the uncertainty in the ice thickness, and the ice thickness. See the file headers. The mean uncertainty is not the uncertainty of the mean because we do not know how the errors are correlated, but it does give some information about the relative confidence in the sample estimates. If the errors were uncorrelated the uncertaity in the mean would be approximately 1/sqrt(nsamps) times the mean uncertainty.

Number of samples

2009-GrnlV2: 54309 point estimates, 55 50-km cluster averages

2010-GrnlV2: 260705 point estimates, 215 50-km clusters

2011-GrnlV2: 256103 point estimates, 152 50-km clusters

2012-GrnlV2: 289234 points estimates, 267 50-km clusters

2013-GrnlV2: 260693 points estimates, 244 50-km clusters

Documentation

Operation IceBridge sea ice freeboard, snow depth, and thickness data products manual (version 2)

NSIDC web site: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/daac/icebridge/idcsi4/index.html#data_description

Kurtz, N. T., Farrell, S. L., Studinger, M., Galin, N., Harbeck, J. P., Lindsay, R., Onana, V. D., Panzer, B., and Sonntag, J. G., 2013: Sea ice thickness, freeboard, and snow depth products from Operation IceBridge airborne data, The Cryosphere, 7, 1035-1056, doi:10.5194/tc-7-1035-2013.

Point data

The 20-m point data for ice thickness is at the National Snow and Ice Data Center as well as all of the clibrated instrument data.

Citation

Kurtz, Nathan, Michael Studinger, Jeremy Harbeck, Vincent-De-Paul Onana, and Sinead Farrell. 2012, updated to current year. IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness, [list dates of data used]. Boulder, Colorado USA: NASA Distributed Active Archive Center at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media. http://nsidc.org/data/idcsi4.html

 

 

 

 

IceBridge Campaign Maps

Greenland 2009 Map

2 April to 24 April, 2009

2010 Greenland map

24 March to 20 April, 2010

2011 Greenland map

16 March to 28 March, 2011

2012 Greenland map

14 March to 10 April, 2012

2012 Greenland map

March 3 to April 24, 2013

2012 Greenland map

All Samples

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Sample Thickness, Uncertainty, and Snow Depth

Greenland 2009 Map

2 April to 24 April, 2009

2010 Greenland map

24 March to 20 April, 2010

2011 Greenland map

16 March to 28 March, 2011

2011 Greenland map

14 March to 10 April, 2012

2011 Greenland map

March 3 to April 24, 2013

 

 

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