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Snow on Sea Ice

Snow on sea ice is an important in the growth and decay cycle of sea ice,under-ice biology and the hydrological balance of the Arctic. This project aims at building upon current climatologies to further investigate linkages between the formation/surface freeze-up date of Arctic sea ice and the depth of snow upon it. Secondary goals of the project, with respect to Arctic on-ice snow depths, are to improve the understanding of inter-annual and regional variability, long-term trends and consequences of possible future scenarios involving changes in sea ice formation dates. A valuable by-product of this project is the creation of a gridded snow depth product, at monthly resolution for each of the past 30 years. This product is being generated through the use of in-situ snow depth measurements, satellite-derived fields of precipitation, ice formation/melt dates and ice floe velocities, and various interpolation techniques and models.