Passive Microwave Sea Ice Edge Displacement Error over the Eastern Canadian Arctic for the period 2013-2021

Abstract

In this study, sea ice edge derived from three passive microwave (PM) algorithms, ARTIST sea ice (ASI), enhanced NASA Team 2 (NT2), and Bootstrap (BT), are compared to those derived from the daily Canadian Ice Service charts over a primarily seasonal ice zone in the eastern Canadian Arctic for 2013–2021. To determine the ice edge error, we introduced an edge-length-based displacement measure called the edge displacement error (EDE), a dimensionless measurement obtained by dividing the weighted average Hausdorff distance by the ice edge length. We found that the ASI algorithm has the highest EDE on average, while the BT algorithm has the lowest one. In October (the beginning of the freeze-up period), the ice edge exhibits significant meandering, and the EDE is less sensitive to changes in the charted area. In the freeze-up period, the PM algorithms have the highest mean EDE value relative to other months due to the appearance of thin ice. A greater range of EDE values was observed in April than in other months. Throughout this region, the wind speed varies the most in April and May, whereas in April, the air temperature fluctuates more than in the other months.