EOCIS: Time Series of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness, Volume & Mass V1.00

This dataset contains Sea Ice Arctic Thickness, Volume and Mass data produced within the Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) project.

The sea ice products provide a time series of Arctic sea ice thickness, volume and mass (for the whole Arctic region and of 17 sub-regions), delivered in NetCDF files, where thickness, volume and mass are each variables.

EOCIS sea ice thickness, volume and mass NetCDF products are generated monthly by the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) from radar altimetry measurements taken from the ESA CryoSAT-2 satellite during the winter months (Oct-Apr).

Sea ice 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.

For future updates to this dataset, see the EOCIS CPOM page in the related documents section.