Arctic sea ice freeboard from IceBridge acquisitions in 2009: Estimates and comparisons with ICESat

Abstract

During the spring of 2009, the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) system on the IceBridge mission acquired cross‐basin surveys of surface elevations of Arctic sea ice. In this paper, the total freeboard derived from four ∼2000 km transects are examined and compared with those from the 2009 ICESat campaign. Total freeboard, the sum of the snow and ice freeboards, is the elevation of the air‐snow interface above the local sea surface. Prior to freeboard retrieval, signal dependent range biases are corrected. With data from a near co‐incident outbound and return track on 21 April, we show that our estimates of the freeboard are repeatable to within ∼4 cm but dependent locally on the density and quality of sea surface references. Overall difference between the ATM and ICESat freeboards for the four transects is 0.7 (8.5) cm (quantity in bracket is standard deviation), with a correlation of 0.78 between the data sets of one hundred seventy‐eight 50 km averages. This establishes a level of confidence in the use of ATM freeboards to provide regional samplings that are consistent with ICESat. In early April, mean freeboards are 41 cm and 55 cm over first year and multiyear sea ice (MYI), respectively. Regionally, the lowest mean ice freeboard (28 cm) is seen on 5 April where the flight track sampled the large expanse of seasonal ice in the western Arctic. The highest mean freeboard (71 cm) is seen in the multiyear ice just west of Ellesmere Island from 21 April. The relatively large unmodeled variability of the residual sea surface resolved by ATM elevations is discussed.