Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness

Data Description

Sea ice freeboard (height of sea ice plus snow layer above sea level) and thickness data derived from ICESat laser altimetry data. Data consist of 13 measurement campaigns spanning the time period from October 2003 to March 2008.

References:

Kurtz, N.T., and T. Markus, Satellite observations of Antarctic sea ice thickness and volume, J. Geophys. Res., 117, C08025, doi:10.1029/2012JC008141, 2012.

 

Markus, T., Massom, R., Worby, A., Lytle, V., Kurtz, N., and T. Maksym, Freeboard, snow depth, and sea ice roughness in East Antarctica from in-situ and multiple satellite data, Ann. Glaciol., 52(57), 2011.

 

 

Data Format

Three data sets utilizing different spatial and temporal resolutions are provided. All data are in ASCII text files. For the full resolution and interpolated gridded data, the first two letters of the file name correspond to the measurement months (i.e. ON= October-November, MJ = May-June, FM = February-March, MA=March-April) and the last two digits correspond to the year. The gridded data are referenced to the 25 km SSM/I grid (https://nsidc.org/data/user-resources/get-started-nsidc-data#anchor-3).

 

Full Resolution Data

Data at the nominal spatial resolution (~70 m) of ICESat.

 

The 5 columns in the text files correspond to:

Time (UTC seconds elapsed since Jan 1 2000 12:00:00 UTC), Lat, Lon, Sea Ice Freeboard (m), Sea Ice Thickness (m)

Data Downloads

• FM04  -  3.1 MB
• FM05  -  3.4 MB
• FM06  -  2.1 MB
• FM08  -  1.7 MB
• MA07  -  3.7 MB
• MJ04  - 11.0 MB
• MJ05  - 23.0 MB
• MJ06  - 20.0 MB
• ON03  - 23.0 MB
• ON04  - 19.0 MB
• ON05  - 11.0 MB
• ON06  -  8.0  MB
• ON07  - 14.0 MB

 Provided as Gzipped Compressed Archives

Interpolated Gridded Data

Data from the full resolution data set gridded to the 25 km SSM/I grid, missing data in areas containing sea ice concentration greater than 50% have been filled in using the interpolation procedure described in Kurtz and Markus, 2012.

 

The 4 columns in the text files correspond to:

Lat, Lon, Sea Ice Freeboard (m), Sea Ice Thickness (m)

Data over land have been set to -999. All other data set to 0.

Data Downloads

• FM04_interp_25km_grid  -  884 KB
• FM05_interp_25km_grid  -  884 KB
• FM06_interp_25km_grid  -  876 KB
• FM08_interp_25km_grid  -  900 KB
• MA07_interp_25km_grid  -  900 KB
• MJ04_interp_25km_grid  -  992 KB
• MJ05_interp_25km_grid  -  992 KB
• MJ06_interp_25km_grid  -  996 KB
• ON03_interp_25km_grid  -  1.1 MB
• ON04_interp_25km_grid  -  1.1 MB
• ON05_interp_25km_grid  -  1.1 MB
• ON06_interp_25km_grid  -  1.1 MB
• ON07_interp_25km_grid  -  1.1 MB

 Provided as Gzipped Compressed Archives

Seasonally Averaged Data

Interpolated gridded data which have been averaged according to each respective season: 1) The 5 October-November data campaigns correspond to the austral spring, 2) The 3 May-June data campaigns correspond to the austral fall, 3) The 5 February-April campaigns correspond to the austral summer.

 

The 4 columns in the text files correspond to:

Lat, Lon, Sea Ice Freeboard (m), Sea Ice Thickness (m)

Data over land have been set to -999. All other data set to 0.

 

Data Downloads

• fall_ICESat_gridded_mean_thickness          - 1012 KB
• spring_ICESat_gridded_mean_thickness     -   1.1 MB
• summer_ICESat_gridded_mean_thickness  -  920 KB

Provided as Gzipped Compressed Archives