Surface roughness data for Arctic sea ice is derived from NASA Operation IceBridge Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) lidar elevation surveys. The dataset contains statistical distributions of roughness for 10 km flight segments, collected during annual low-altitude campaigns between March and May from 2009 to 2018. It is produced by NASA and hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Use Cases
- Analyzing spatial variability of sea ice topography using gridded 30 m along-track cells.
- Modeling surface drag coefficients for climate simulations using percentile roughness statistics (e.g., 5th, 25th, 75th, 95th, 99th).
- Calibrating satellite altimetry measurements of sea ice with in-situ airborne lidar data.
- Investigating seasonal and interannual changes in Arctic ice conditions across a nine-year time series.
Strengths
- Data is derived from high-resolution, low-altitude NASA airborne lidar surveys, providing detailed surface measurements.
- The grid configuration (30 m along-track) optimizes point density for statistical calculations on 10 km segments.
- Covers a multi-year period (2009-2018) from annual campaigns, allowing temporal trend analysis.
- Includes detailed statistical distribution metrics such as mean, maximum, and multiple percentiles of surface roughness.
Limitations
- Key metadata such as exact row count, file size, specific column names, and license are unavailable across all platforms.
- The conical scanning geometry leads to non-uniform across-track sampling density, which the gridding method must account for.
- Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2018-04 16 vs. 2026-03-06), indicating potential metadata inconsistency.
Provenance
- Source
- NASA Operation IceBridge, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
- Collection Method
- Derived from Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) lidar elevation data acquired during annual low-altitude airborne surveys.
- Time Range
- 2009 to 2018
- Freshness
- 2026-03 06 00:06:35.252743
- Geography
- Arctic sea ice regions.