1. Satellite Observations for Detecting and Forecasting Sea-Ice Conditions: A Summary of Advances Made in the SPICES Project by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme
- Author
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Mäkynen, Marko, Haapala, Jari, Aulicino, Giuseppe, Balan-Sarojini, Beena, Balmaseda, Magdalena, Gegiuc, Alexandru, Girard-Ardhuin, Fanny, Hendricks, Stefan, Heygster, Georg, Istomina, Larysa, Kaleschke, Lars, Karvonen, Juha, Krumpen, Thomas, Lensu, Mikko, Mayer, Michael, Parmiggiani, Flavio, Ricker, Robert, Rinne, Eero, Schmitt, Amelie, Similä, Markku, Tietsche, Steffen, Tonboe, Rasmus, Wadhams, Peter, Winstrup, Mai, and Zuo, Hao
- Subjects
13. Climate action ,37 Earth Sciences ,14. Life underwater ,3708 Oceanography ,3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience ,14 Life Below Water ,4013 Geomatic Engineering ,40 Engineering - Abstract
The detection, monitoring, and forecasting of sea-ice conditions, including their extremes, is very important for ship navigation and offshore activities, and for monitoring of sea-ice processes and trends. We summarize here recent advances in the monitoring of sea-ice conditions and their extremes from satellite data as well as the development of sea-ice seasonal forecasting capabilities. Our results are the outcome of the three-year (2015–2018) SPICES (Space-borne Observations for Detecting and Forecasting Sea-Ice Cover Extremes) project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. New SPICES sea-ice products include pancake ice thickness and degree of ice ridging based on synthetic aperture radar imagery, Arctic sea-ice volume and export derived from multisensor satellite data, and melt pond fraction and sea-ice concentration using Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) radiometer data. Forecasts of July sea-ice conditions from initial conditions in May showed substantial improvement in some Arctic regions after adding sea-ice thickness (SIT) data to the model initialization. The SIT initialization also improved seasonal forecasts for years with extremely low summer sea-ice extent. New SPICES sea-ice products have a demonstrable level of maturity, and with a reasonable amount of further work they can be integrated into various operational sea-ice services.