Lake Ice Break-Up across Peripheral Greenland (2017-2021) from Sentinel-1 SAR

Dataset from Posch, C., Abermann, J., and Silva, T.: Lake ice break-up in Greenland: timing and spatiotemporal variability, The Cryosphere, 18, 2035–2059, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-2035-2024, 2024. Timing of lake ice break-up for 563 lakes across peripheral South, Southwest and Northwest Greenland (< 71° N) from Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for 2017-2021. This is based on an automated detection from dynamic numerical thresholding which utilizes SAR backscatter differences between lake ice surface and open water. The data proves to be conservative and exhibits a mean error of maximum 5 days (i.e., being 5 days later) in break-up timing which is based on a validation against lake ice observations. Based on a observed variability of lake ice break-up timing in the studied period (+/- 8 days), we also produced estimates for a hypothetical 8-days-earlier break-up of all lakes and its manifestation in execess energy at the lake, which was calculated from site-specific RACMO2.3p incoming shortwave radiation data. More information is to be found in the README file.