Historical Sea Ice Time Series from the Atlantic Arctic

The ‘Historical Sea Ice Time Series from the Atlantic Arctic’ data are a compilation of existing century-scale time series derived from historical observations and sea ice charts from a range of sources. The purpose of the dataset is to provide a convenient compilation and consistent description of these published though scattered data. Provided here are various indices of sea-ice conditions, ranging from estimated sea-ice extent, sea-ice edge, sea-ice export and sea-ice incidence (duration). The original time series were constructed by individual researchers using various sources ranging from historical ice charts to annals and other descriptive information.

Spatial and temporal coverage varies. Spatially, the data span the Atlantic Arctic from Newfoundland to the Barents and Baltic Seas. The representativeness of each series is typically sub-regional (10s of km) to regional (100s of km). Temporally, the time series are range from approximately one to three centuries. There a very few years with missing values, usually in the early part of the series. There is generally one value per year; however, the effective temporal resolution is sub-annual, typically representing a seasonal indicator.