Abstract
Sea ice motion is an essential parameter when determining sea ice deformation, regional advection, and the outflow of ice from the Arctic Ocean. The Robeson Channel, which is located between Ellesmere Island and northwest Greenland, is a narrow but crucial channel for ice outflow. Only three Eulerian sea ice motion products derived from ocean/sea ice reanalysis are available: GLORYS12V1, PSY4V3, and TOPAZ4. In this study, we used Lagrangian ice motion in the Robeson Channel derived from Sentinel-1 images to assess GLORYS12V1, PSY4V3, and TOPAZ4. The influence of the presence of ice arches, and wind and tidal forcing on the accuracies of the reanalysis products was also investigated. The results show that the PSY4V3 product performs the best as it underestimates the motion the least, whereas TOPAZ4 grossly underestimates the motion. This is particularly true in regimes of free drift after the formation of the northern arch. In areas with slow ice motion or grounded ice floes, the GLORYS12V1 and TOPAZ4 products offer a better estimation. The spatial distribution of the deviation between the products and ice floe drift is also presented and shows a better agreement in the Robeson Channel compared to the packed ice regime north of the Robeson Channel.
Highlights
Published: 11 January 2022Sea ice motion, which is primarily driven by wind and oceanic forcing, is an essential parameter for characterizing ice advection and deformation [1,2]
The outflow of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic Ocean plays a crucial role for both the annual variation of the Arctic sea ice mass [3,4] and the formation of deep water in the North
The objective of this study is to assess the sea ice motion obtained from three reanalysis products in the Robeson Channel, using the drift of individual ice floes tracked from daily
Summary
Sea ice motion, which is primarily driven by wind and oceanic forcing, is an essential parameter for characterizing ice advection and deformation [1,2]. The Arctic sea ice motion products are important for initializing and/or verifying sea ice–ocean coupling model simulations [6]. Greenland, is a narrow but significant gate for sea ice and freshwater outflow from the Channel [7,8]. The characteristics of the sea ice motion through the channel have strong intermittency and seasonal dependency [9], because of the interruption of the Arctic ice outflow during periods when an ice arch exists either at the entrance of the Robeson. From September 2016 to August 2017, the ice influx in the Robeson Channel was blocked
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