Snow, Wind, and Time Project: Terrestrial Lidar Scanner Snow Accumulation Maps, Utqiagvik, AK, November 2016 - June 2017

The insulating and reflective properties of snow substantially influence Arctic sea ice growth and decay. The overwhelming consensus within the scientific community is that the details of snow and sea ice interactions must be better incorporated in Earth System models, yet basic information on snow processes remains poorly quantified. The limited treatment of snow in Earth System models is largely based on datasets from field experiments on multi-year ice and does not capture changing snow properties and processes. Increasingly pervasive younger, thinner ice carries a different snowpack and is likely much more sensitive to snow conditions than the multi-year ice of the past. Predicting Arctic climate requires that we understand snow on sea ice and its interactions and feedbacks among the rest of the climate system components. A particularly important aspect of snow on sea ice is its fine-scale spatial redistribution. Wind-driven snow redistribution into dunes and drifts controls thermal fluxes and melt pond formation, exerting considerable control over ice mass balance. This dataset consists of surface elevation maps collected with terrestrial lidar scanning. Observations seek to capture the accumulation of the sea ice snowpack as it evolves through the winter season. The data is a time series of roughly monthly observations all collected over the within the same ~500x700m area on Elson Lagoon. The data is also fixed in an ice-based reference frame, so differences in surface position are predominantly caused by changes in snow depth.