Dehn Collection of Historical Arctic Sea Ice Charts

Over 6,800 scanned charts document sea ice conditions off Alaska and western Canada from 1953 to 1986. The collection was donated by William S. Dehn's estate and digitized through a partnership between NSIDC, NOAA's CDMP, and NGDC. These visual records primarily show ice edge position and concentration, though annotations can be sparse.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical ice edge position for climate trend validation.
• Studying spatial patterns of sea ice concentration from annotated charts.
• Digitizing and vectorizing chart annotations to create time-series geospatial datasets.
• Comparing pre-satellite era ice conditions with modern satellite observations.

Strengths

• Contains a large collection of over 6,800 individual charts.
• Provides a unique pre-satellite era record spanning 33 years (1953-1986).
• Digitization involved a formal partnership between NSIDC, NOAA CDMP, and NGDC.

Limitations

• Chart notations are described as sparse and discontinuous in space and time.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date (1986-12-31 vs. 2026-03-12).
• Specific column names and dataset size are not provided by any platform.

Provenance

Source

Estate of William S. Dehn, curated by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Collection Method

Charts were physically collected, then scanned and made searchable via NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program.

Time Range

1953-1986

Freshness

2026-03-12 21:06:59.423679

Geography

Seas off Alaska and western Canadian coasts.