An ESA-funded project to model sea ice dynamics using archived radar data from the Envisat and ERS missions has released its first validated datasets for the Arctic winters of 2004–11. Mapping sea ice displacement is key for climate research.

Sea ice profoundly affects the exchanges of heat, water and momentum between the ocean and atmosphere, and plays an important role in oceanic convection and deep-water formation.

The €1 million GlobIce project, which began in 2005 with a consortium of eight partners led by University College London (UCL), measures sea ice motion for use in climate modelling and research.

In support of the Climate and Cryosphere project of the World Climate Research Programme, GlobIce validates sea ice motion, deformation and ice flux.

Radar images of ice displacement, which is determined at intervals of a few days, are used to generate a large number of high-resolution products useful for climate research, such as sea ice velocity maps.

GlobIce products provide Arctic-wide sea ice dynamics data at more than ten times the resolution of any other wide-area satellite-derived products currently available.

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The increasing complexity and resolution of climate models lead to a demand for comprehensive datasets against which to test them,” said Dr Jeff Ridley, climate scientist at the UK Met Office. “With GlobIce, we finally have a sea ice dataset which will endure and provide for model evaluation now and in years to come.

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