HF radar observations of Arctic pack-ice breakup

Abstract

This paper describes the first reported high-resolution remote measurements of sea-ice velocities during the summer Arctic pack-ice breakup, made with a high-frequency (HF) radar system (CODAR, for Coastal Ocean Dynamics Applications Radar) located on Cross Island, Alaska. Each 36-min observation also gives the positions of the ice edge, the moving ice, and the open water, with an azimuthal and distance resolution of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5\deg</tex> and 1.2 km, respectively, to a range of 15 km. The statistical uncertainties in speed are typically 2-4 cm/s. The ice breakup was observed over a two-day period starting with low ice velocity and no open water and ending with ice and current velocities of approximately 40 cm/s. The position of the ice edge is verified by a simultaneous synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image. To compare the ice, current, and wind velocities, a uniform velocity model was fitted to the measurements of radial velocity. The speed of both ice and current under free drift conditions was found to lie between 2 and 5 percent of the wind speed and the direction within <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">20\deg</tex> of the wind direction.