Investigating Liquid Sources on Arctic Sea Ice and Their Effect in Remote Sensing Observations

Due to its unique thermal and optical properties, snow plays a critical role in the seasonal evolution of the Arctic sea ice system. Snow-on-sea-ice properties are also crucial for sea ice thickness monitoring with satellite altimetry. Snow depth and density are required to derive sea ice thickness accurately from altimetry observations of freeboard. The presence of liquid water in the snowpack decreases the penetration depth of the radar signals, adding to the uncertainty sources of satellite altimetry. We use SnowModel-LG, a snow-evolution modeling system to produce daily, pan-Arctic distributions of snow-on-sea-ice properties on a 25 × 25-km grid, from 1 August 1980 through 31 July 2022. We investigate liquid sources in the snow and their effect on radar altimeter measurements from CryoSat-2 since the early 2000s.