Sea ice retreat

Examining the impacts of atmospheric and oceanic forcings on the sea ice retreat processes by using combination of autonomous sea ice mass balance buoy (IMB), upper-ocean profiler and satellite remote sensing.  

The research regions are the Beaufort/Chukchi Seas in the Arctic and Weddell/Bellingshausen Seas in the Antarctic, where IMBs and upper-ocean profiler are being deployed, and high-resolution satellite data are being acquired following the buoy-deployed ice floes. 

The project involves the observation of sea ice melt (from IMBs), mixed layer (from ITP or upper-ocean string) and horizontal floe breakup (from the satellite data), in order to address the physical processes associated with the retreat of summer sea ice.

This on-going project is supported by NERC-funded projects (Oceans2025, ICEBell) and EU-funded ACCESS, and uses the outputs from sea ice floe size distribution project stated below.

Sea ice floe size distribution

Developing a robust (semi-automated) algorithm to derive sea ice floe size distribution (FSD) from high-resolution space-born synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data (e.g. TerraSAR-X).  This challenging work is supported by three space agents, DLR, CSA and ESA, for the access to various state-of-art satellite data, and the satellite costs are supported by NERC-funded projects (Oceans2025, ICEBell).

Sea ice drift validation and summer ice drift

This work examines the accuracy of most up-to-date satellite sea ice drift data and explores the feasibility in constructing reliable summer sea ice drift. 

Sea ice in the Arctic has become increasingly dynamic, e.g. it moves faster and is more easily getting deformed.  Recently sea ice drift (operational or experimental) has been derived from various satellite sensors, however, inter-validation of those sea ice drift data lacks.  Together with OSI-SAF at the Norwegian Metereological Office, I took the initiative for the inter-validation works as part of the Associated Scholar Scheme under EUMASAT.  We are expanding this work including more sea ice drift data (e.g. DTU ASAR ice drift data) to provide error statistics of those sea ice drift data, which is essential for modeling community for data assimilation.  The second objective of this project is to construct reliable summer ice drift data by combining the sea ice drift data with model data, which is still largely missing in current sea ice products. 

This on-going project is supported by EUMASAT and NERC-funded Oceans2025.

Grant capture

• EU-funded ACCESS
• UK NERC-funded Oceans2025
• UK NERC-funded ICEBell
• Royal Society International Joint Projects: Sea Ice-Ocean-Atmosphere Variability in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean
• EUMASAT Associated/Visiting Scholar Scheme: Further validation of the OSI SAF seaw ice drift products and comparison to those from IFREMER/Cersat
• DLR, ESA, CSA: Retrieval of sea-ice floe size distribution.