Sea ice freeboard in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, derived by s
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TitleSea ice freeboard in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, derived by surface-validated ICESat laser altimeter dataAbstractPrevious investigations have linked changes in the multiyear sea ice area of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, from 1213 km2 in 2003 to 4923 km 2 in 2005, to the passage of large tabular icebergs preventing the annual sea ice breakout. This maximum coverage then gradually diminished, by 2009 covering 1453 km2. This investigation employs the use of the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimeter to derive freeboard of sea ice in McMurdo Sound from 2003 to 2009 and hence infer thickness changes over this time period. Two techniques for freeboard retrieval are compared. Method-1 (M-1) follows those previously presented in the literature using the lowest elevations to construct an estimate of sea surface height. However, the lack of leads in the study area motivated the development of Method-2 (M-2) which utilizes tide models. Each year is divided into two investigation periods from September to December and February to June, and these investigations were further segmented by sea ice type, first-year (FY), and multiyear (MY). Both applied methods reveal a statistically significant linear increase in multiyear sea ice freeboard. For M-1, the mean freeboard increased over the study period from 0.53 to 1.00 m and for M-2 from 0.46 to 0.95 m. Evidence is presented that the multiyear sea ice freeboard increase is strongly linked to the development and incorporation of a subice platelet layer. No statistically significant trends were observed for first-year sea ice. ICESat derived freeboards over first-year and multiyear sea ice areas compare within one standard deviation of airborne measured freeboard in November 2009. ÂCopyright2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.AcknowledgementsICESat data are provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, Boulder, Colorado. Envisat ASAR data were received through Cryosat cal/val project 4512. MODIS data were obtained through NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System. This research was partly supported by NIWA under project CO1X1226 (Ross Sea Climate and Ecosystem). Gratitude is given to participants in the 2009 EM-Bird field work measurements. The field work was supported by Antarctica New Zealand as events K053 and K063. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers and editor Andrey Proshutinsky for their comments and suggestions which greatly improved the paper. This work was carried out at Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
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1st AuthorPrice, D.AuthorPrice, D.Rack, W.Haas, C.Langhorne, P.Marsh, O.Year2013JournalJournal of Geophysical Research: OceansVolume118Number7Pages3634-3650DOI10.1002/jgrc.20266URLhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/recor.....f0f1c4f53b480575b637a8659KeywordsAneroid altimetersRadio altimeters, First-year sea icesHEMICESatLand elevation satellitesLaser altimeter datumMcMurdo soundsSea-ice thicknessStandard deviation, Sea ice, ice thicknessicebergICESatsatellite altimetrysatellite datasea ice, AntarcticaEast AntarcticaMcMurdo Sound, rank5Author KeywordsHEMICESatMcMurdo soundsea ice freeboardsea ice thickness
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TypeArticleCitationPrice, D., Rack, W., Haas, C., Langhorne, P. and Marsh, O. (2013) Sea ice freeboard in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, derived by surface-validated ICESat laser altimeter data. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 118(7): 3634-3650 doi:10.1002/jgrc.20266 IdentifierPrice2013Relevancerank5
Marsh, O., Sea ice freeboard in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, derived by s , [Price2013]. Antarctica NZ, accessed 02/08/2026, https://adam.antarcticanz.govt.nz/nodes/view/63720, 10.1002/jgrc.20266