#ECCC 2014 Snow on Sea Ice Campaign

During March and April of 2014, ECCC completed a coordinated field-based campaign to evaluate radar-derived estimates of snow depth on sea from NASA’s Operation IceBridge. The dataset housed in this repository contains measurements of snow depth, snow density, sea ice thickness, and sea ice freeboard collected near Eureka, Nunavut, Canada on first year sea ice between 24 March 2014 and 02 April 2014. Measurements are coincident with a NASA Operation IceBridge mission flown on 25 March 2014 (see mission report for details). Data contained in the repository was used in King, et. al., 2015 to evaluate the IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look product.

The full campaign dataset is provided as a single file in HDF5 format which be read with common tools including HDFView, h5py, and rhdf5. Example code using rhdf5 in R has been provided within the repository.

Measurements are organized by instrument and experiment type. The largest set of measurements were collected along a 56 km transect, identified by the site_name transect and a site_id of 1. Three additional sites identified as Grid1, Grid2, and Grid3 provide intensive local scale measurements characterized by strong differences in ice surface topography.

Unit type attributes have been provided where appropriate.

All coordinates are stored as float lat/lon values with WGS 84 as the CRS.

###Gridded data example

###Transect data example

#Measurements Three groups define the measurement types identified as auger, esc30, and magnaprobe.

###Auger Measurements within the auger group (/eureka_data/auger) were collected at points where a 15 cm diameter auger was used to drill through the full sea ice thickness. Snow depth (/eureka_data/auger/snow_depth) was measure to the nearest 0.01 m above each auger location using an avalance probe. Ice thickness(/eureka_data/auger/ice_thickness) was measured between the snow-ice interface and ice draft to the nearest cm with a probe and hook. Freeboard (/eureka_data/auger/ice_freeboard) was measured between the snow-ice interface and water level to the nearest cm using an avalanche probe. Coordinate information provided within this sub-group was collected with a handheld Garmin GPS unit (~3.0 m accuracy).

Note that NaN values for ice thickness indicate that the auger was not able to penetrate the full volume. If a value is desired at these points it should be assumed that ice thickness is greater than 2.3 m.

###ESC-30 Measurements within the esc30 group (/eureka_data/esc30) were collected at points where a snow corer (30 cm cross-sectional area) was used to extract samples. Measurements were collected in pairs and as a result two values are available for most dataset items. Snow depth (/eureka_data/esc30/snow_depth) was measured using . Extracted samples were weighed in the field with a calibrated hanging scale to produce the /eureka_data/esc30/mass dataset. Snow density (/eureka_data/esc30/snow_rho) is calculated as mass / (29.225 * snow_depth) where 29.225 is the cross-section of the ESC-30. Coordinate information provided within this sub-group was collected with a handheld Garmin GPS unit (~3.0 m accuracy).

Note that disagreement between co-located sample pairs is not an indicator of operator error!

###Magnaprobe All measurements contained within the magnaprobe group (/eureka_data/magnaprobe) were collected with GPS-enabled Snow Hydro Magnaprobe units. Point measruements of snow depth are provided in the dataset /eureka_data/magnaprobe/snow_depth. Measurements have been rounded to the nearest mm and are provided in m units.

King, J., S. Howell, C. Derksen, N. Rutter, P. Toose, J. F. Beckers, C. Haas, N. Kurtz, and J. Richter-Menge (2015), Evaluation of Operation IceBridge quick-look snow depth estimates on sea ice, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 9302–9310, doi:10.1002/2015GL066389.

Josh King, Research Scientist, joshua.king[at]canada.ca

This dataset is licensed under the Open Government License of Canada and is subject to the Copyright Act of Canada. Additional infomration can be found at the Government of Canada's Open Government portal