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Arctic Sea Ice Thickness, Volume and Mass Data

processed by:

CPOM

EOCIS Arctic Sea Ice Products

Arctic sea ice trends are a key indicator of climate change, an obstacle to maritime activities, a factor in habitat loss, and a significant influence on winter time weather in north west Europe.

EOCIS sea ice thickness, volume and mass netcdf products are generated monthly by CPOM from radar altimetry measurements taken from the ESA CryoSAT-2 satellite during the winter months1 (Oct-Apr). You can view or download products here.

Time-series of Last 2-years

Mean Sea ice thickness grows each Arctic winter season from October to April

Full Period (key winter months): 2010:2024

Shows the trend in Arctic sea ice thickness since 2010 when CryoSat was launched at the start (Oct), middle (Jan), and end (Apr) of the winter season.

Arctic Monthly Sea Ice Thickness

 

Month

Year

View NetCDF Parameter

Sea Ice Thickness

EOCIS-SEAICE-L3C-SITHICK-CS2-5KM-202402-fv1.0.nc


Near Real Time (NRT) sea ice thickness data at 2-day latency (preliminary accuracy) is also available from CPOM at this link

Latest Arctic Sea Ice Report (Q4 2023)

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Notes

1Sea ice freeboard (and derived thickness) is only reliably measured from satellite radar altimetry during the winter months. During summer, melt ponds can form on the sea ice floes making it difficult for the satellite to differentiate between floes and leads, and hence calculate sea ice freeboard (and subsequently thickness). Measurement during summer months using radar altimetry is an area of active research (Landy et al, 2022) but is not yet operationally processed.

Product Information

EOCIS Sea Ice products consist of 2 types of product, one gridded, one time-series (both in NetCDF4 format):

ProductProduct PeriodSeasonLatencyTypeProjectionFormat
Arctic Sea Ice Thickness1 MonthWinter(Oct-Apr)-2 monthsGrid (5km)EPSG:3413NetCDF4
Arctic Sea Thickness & VolumeNov-2010 until latest monthWinter(Oct-Apr)-2 monthsMonthly Time seriesNetCDF4

To download products or find out about product URLs for automatic downloads click on the download icon [ ] for each product.

Note that products only include measurements from the Arctic winter season (Oct-Apr). This is because during summer months, melt ponds form on the sea ice, making it more difficult for CryoSat-2's radar to distinguish between sea ice floes and leads, and hence reliably measure sea ice freeboard (and subsequently determine thickness and volume). New techniques are being developed to measure summer sea ice from CryoSat-2, but these are not yet ready for operational use.