Introduction 

Sea ice floating on the ocean surface of the polar and sub-polar regions acts as a membrane effectively reducing the exchange of sensible and latent heat, and of momentum. Moreover, it acts as a unique floating (and drifting) habitat for various species.
 
Due to its high shortwave albedo compared to open water and many other Earth surfaces sea ice reflects the main portion of the incoming solar radiation causing a negative radiation budget. A snow cover on sea ice is quite common. Snow further increases the shortwave albedo and insulates the sea ice cover from short-periodic atmospheric influences.
 
Sea-ice formation and melt are linked to oceanic processes such as overturning, deep water formation, and stratification, and thus sea ice plays a major role keeping the conveyer belt in the World Ocean alive. During recent years it turned out that sea ice can act as indicator for climate change, and indeed the Arctic sea-ice cover is shrinking - with consequences for the entire polar and sub-polar environment, for the mid-latitudes and - via the conveyer belt - for the World Ocean.
 
Remoteness and environmental conditions (weather, daylight, communication) of the polar regions hampers activities to investigate and monitor the sea-ice cover. However, satellite technology permits to monitor both polar hemispheres entirly at least twice daily. A variety of sensors which operate in the visible/infrared/microwave frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum allow different sea-ice and snow properties to be identified and monitored at different spatial resolutions and repeat cycles.
 

Find more ...

• Introduction
  
• AMSR-E ice concentration
• SEA LION algorithm
• Sea ice volume flux
• Scatterometer measurements
• Polynya monitoring
  
  • Northeast Open Water
  • Storfjorden area polynyas
  • Kara Sea polynyas
  • Laptev Sea polynyas
  • East-Siberian Sea polynyas
  • Ross Sea polynyas