Mass Balance of Multiyear Sea Ice in the Southern Beaufort Sea

AbstractTwo Kipp hemispherical radiometers mounted back to back and suspended by an 18 m cable from a helicopter flying at an altitude of about 90 m were used to make measurements of incident and reflected short-wave radiation. The helicopter was brought to a hovering position at the instant of measurement to ensure that the radiometers were in the proper attitude and a photograph of the ice cover was taken at the same time. The observations were made in 1969 during 16 flights out of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories (lat. 69° 26’N., long. 133° 02’W.) over the fast ice extending 80 km north of Tuktoyaktuk. Values of albedo of the ice cover were found to decrease during the melting period according to the equation A = 0.59 —0.32P where P is the degree of puddling of the surface.

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Increasing Multiyear Sea Ice Loss in the Beaufort Sea: A New Export Pathway for the Diminishing Multiyear Ice Cover of the Arctic Ocean

10.1002/essoar.10509833.1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

David Gareth Babb ◽

Ryan J. Galley ◽

Stephen E. L. Howell ◽

Jack Christopher Landy ◽

Julienne Christine Stroeve ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Arctic Ocean ◽

Beaufort Sea ◽

Ice Cover ◽

The Arctic ◽

Export Pathway ◽

The Arctic Ocean ◽

Multiyear Ice

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The importance of wind-blown snow redistribution to snow accumulation on Bellingshausen Sea ice

Annals of Glaciology ◽

10.3189/172756411795931651 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 52 (57) ◽

pp. 271-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Katherine C. Leonard ◽

Ted Maksym

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Mass Balance ◽

Snow Accumulation ◽

Blowing Snow ◽

Wind Speeds ◽

Antarctic Sea Ice ◽

Drifting Snow ◽

Bellingshausen Sea ◽

Ice Mass Balance ◽

High Winds

AbstractSnow distribution is a dominating factor in sea-ice mass balance in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, through its roles in insulating the ice and contributing to snow-ice production. the wind has long been qualitatively recognized to influence the distribution of snow accumulation on sea ice, but the relative importance of drifting and blowing snow has not been quantified over Antarctic sea ice prior to this study. the presence and magnitude of drifting snow were monitored continuously along with wind speeds at two sites on an ice floe in the Bellingshausen Sea during the October 2007 Sea Ice Mass Balance in the Antarctic (SIMBA) experiment. Contemporaneous precipitation measurements collected on board the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer and accumulation measurements by automated ice mass-balance buoys (IMBs) allow us to document the proportion of snowfall that accumulated on level ice surfaces in the presence of high winds and blowing-snow conditions. Accumulation on the sea ice during the experiment averaged <0.01 m w.e. at both IMB sites, during a period when European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts analyses predicted >0.03 m w.e. of precipitation on the ice floe. Accumulation changes on the ice floe were clearly associated with drifting snow and high winds. Drifting-snow transport during the SIMBA experiment was supply-limited. Using these results to inform a preliminary study using a blowing-snow model, we show that over the entire Southern Ocean approximately half of the precipitation over sea ice could be lost to leads.

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Investigation of spatiotemporal variability of melt pond fraction and its relationship with sea ice extent during 2000–2017 using a new data

10.5194/tc-2019-208 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Yifan Ding ◽

Xiao Cheng ◽

Jiping Liu ◽

Fengming Hui ◽

Zhenzhan Wang

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Arctic Basin ◽

Beaufort Sea ◽

Arctic Sea Ice ◽

Spatiotemporal Variability ◽

First Year ◽

Spatial And Temporal Variability ◽

Sea Ice Extent ◽

Melt Pond ◽

Melt Ponds

Abstract. The accurate knowledge of variations of melt ponds is important for understanding Arctic energy budget due to its albedo-transmittance-melt feedback. In this study, we develop and validate a new method for retrieving melt pond fraction (MPF) from the MODIS surface reflectance. We construct an ensemble-based deep neural network and use in-situ observations of MPF from multi-sources to train the network. The results show that our derived MPF is in good agreement with the observations, and relatively outperforms the MPF retrieved by University of Hamburg. Built on this, we create a new MPF data from 2000 to 2017 (the longest data in our knowledge), and analyze the spatial and temporal variability of MPF. It is found that the MPF has significant increasing trends from late July to early September, which is largely contributed by the MPF over the first-year sea ice. The analysis based on our MPF during 2000–2017 confirms that the integrated MPF to late June does promise to improve the prediction skill of seasonal Arctic sea ice minimum. However, our MPF data shows concentrated significant correlations first appear in a band, extending from the eastern Beaufort Sea, through the central Arctic, to the northern East Siberian and Laptev Seas in early-mid June, and then shifts towards large areas of the Beaufort Sea, Canadian Arctic, the northern Greenland Sea and the central Arctic basin.

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Inorganic carbon fluxes on the Mackenzie Shelf of the Beaufort Sea

10.5194/bg-2017-318 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jacoba Mol ◽

Helmuth Thomas ◽

Paul G. Myers ◽

Xianmin Hu ◽

Alfonso Mucci

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Inorganic Carbon ◽

Dissolved Inorganic Carbon ◽

Beaufort Sea ◽

Total Alkalinity ◽

The Arctic ◽

Surface Mixed Layer ◽

Saturation State ◽

Carbon Transfer ◽

Mackenzie Shelf

Abstract. The Mackenzie Shelf in the southeastern Beaufort Sea is a region that has experienced large changes in the past several decades as warming, sea-ice loss, and increased river discharge have altered carbon cycling. Upwelling and downwelling events are common on the shelf, caused by strong, fluctuating along-shore winds, resulting in cross-shelf Ekman transport, and an alternating estuarine and anti-estuarine circulation. Downwelling carries inorganic carbon and other remineralization products off the shelf and into the deep basin for possible long-term storage in the world oceans. Upwelling carries dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and nutrient-rich waters from the Pacific-origin upper halocline layer (UHL) onto the shelf. Profiles of DIC and total alkalinity (TA) taken in August and September of 2014 are used to investigate the cycling of inorganic carbon on the Mackenzie Shelf. The along-shore transport of water and the cross-shelf transport of inorganic carbon are quantified using velocity field output from a simulation of the Arctic and Northern Hemisphere Atlantic (ANHA4) configuration of the Nucleus of European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) framework. A strong upwelling event prior to sampling on the Mackenzie Shelf is analyzed and the resulting influence on the carbonate system, including the saturation state of waters with respect to aragonite and pH, is investigated. TA and the oxygen isotope ratio of water (δ18O) are used to examine water-mass distributions in the study area and to investigate the influence of Pacific Water, Mackenzie River freshwater, and sea-ice melt on carbon dynamics and air-sea fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the surface mixed layer. Understanding carbon transfer in this seasonally dynamic environment is key to quantify the importance of Arctic shelf regions to the global carbon cycle and provide a basis for understanding how it will respond to the aforementioned climate-induced changes.

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The impact of a seasonally ice free Arctic Ocean on the climate and surface mass balance of Svalbard

The Cryosphere Discussions ◽

10.5194/tcd-5-1887-2011 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 1887-1920

Author(s):

J. J. Day ◽

J. L. Bamber ◽

P. J. Valdes ◽

J. Kohler

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Arctic Ocean ◽

Mass Balance ◽

21St Century ◽

Surface Mass Balance ◽

Surface Mass ◽

Sea Ice Decline ◽

Ice Edge ◽

Sea Ice Edge ◽

The Impact

Abstract. General circulation models (GCMs) predict a rapid decrease in Arctic sea ice extent in the 21st century. The decline of September sea ice is expected to continue until the Arctic Ocean is seasonally ice free, leading to a much perturbed Arctic climate with large changes in surface energy flux. Svalbard, located on the present day sea ice edge, contains many low lying ice caps and glaciers which are extremely sensitive to changes in climate. Records of past accumulation indicate that the surface mass balance (SMB) of Svalbard is also sensitive to changes in the position of the sea ice edge. To investigate the impact of 21st Century sea ice decline on the climate and surface mass balance of Svalbard a high resolution (25 km) regional climate model (RCM) was forced with a repeating cycle of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea ice conditions for the periods 1961–1990 and 2061–2090. By prescribing 20th Century SSTs and 21st Century sea ice for one simulation, the impact of sea ice decline is isolated. This study shows that the coupled impact of sea ice decline and SST increase results in a decrease in SMB, whereas the impact of sea ice decline alone causes an increase in SMB of similar magnitude.

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Unusual drift behaviour of multi-year sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2018

Polar Research ◽

10.33265/polar.v39.3617 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 39 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Noriaki Kimura ◽

Kazutaka Tateyama ◽

Kazutoshi Sato ◽

Richard A. Krishfield ◽

Hajime Yamaguchi

Keyword(s):

Sea Ice ◽

Beaufort Sea

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