New Unified Sea Ice Thickness Climate Data Record

Abstract

With the recent dramatic record‐low ice extent of 2007 and with the third‐lowest extent having been recorded in 2010, the changing Arctic climate, and particularly the rapidly changing sea ice cover, is often in the news. The climate models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report forecast that rising Arctic temperatures and the reduction of sea ice will be the earliest and strongest indications of global warming. However, these models generally underestimate the observed rate of change in summer ice cover over the past 3 decades [Stroeve et al., 2007].