Arctic 2006

Six successful flights with the NASA P-3B aircraft over the Alaskan Arctic were conducted between March 18 and March 25, 2006. The prime objective was to validate and evaluate AMSR-E snow depth on sea ice retrievals. A secondary objective was to underfly ICESat to assess the impact of snow on ICESat ice thickness retrievals. The NASA aircraft was equipped with four primary instruments:

- A microwave radiometer (A. Gasiewski, U. Colorado) with frequencies similar to AMSR-E
- A snow radar (S.P. Gogineni, U. Kansas), which can directly measure the snow depth on sea ice
- A radar altimeter (C. Leuschen, JHU APL), which measures the height of the sea ice
- A laser altimeter (W. Krabill, GSFC Wallops), which measures the height of the snow.

Validation was done in a two-step upscaling process: In-situ measurements of snow and sea ice were carried out over the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Barrow, AK, (PIs: M. Sturm, CRREL, and J. Maslanik, U. Colorado) and their measurements were overflown in order to validate the aircraft instruments. Patterns over the Arctic Ocean corresponding to 4x8 12.5 km AMSR-E pixels were flown for direct comparison with the AMSR-E snow depth retrievals. The success of the campaign resulted from the lessons learned from our 2003 Arctic campaign and the close coordination among the PIs, the instrument scientists, the aircraft managers and crew, and the scientists on the ground at Barrow. The fact that the aircraft and sensors all performed well played no small part.

Press Coverage: In addition to a NASA press release and several scientific websites the campaign was covered by cnn, abc news, and msnbc and other news organizations.

Flight 1, March 18:
Barrow area to validate aircraft instruments and to test the snow radar and determine its optimum operating altitude

Flight 2, March 20:
2nd Barrow flight to validate the snow radar and to develop a coordinated in-situ, laser/radar altimeter, and snow radar snow depth data sets.

Flight 3, March 21:
Beaufort Sea area for direct AMSR-E comparison over mostly shallow snow

Flight 4, March 22:
Chukchi Sea area for direct AMSR-E comparison over mostly deep snow

Flight 5, March 24:
Chukchi Sea flight track underneath ICESat orbit

Flight 6, March 25:
Beaufort Sea area for direct AMSR-E comparison over a mixture of first-year and multiyear ice

 

ICESat tracks over Arctic2006 study region

 

Expedition Photos  

    

 

Images

March 20 Barrow region: field data lines, map, SAR image, MODIS image

 

Field data lines along which various measurement were taken, such as snow depth.

 

Gridded aircraft PSR data (color), along with several conical PSR tracks and
Cessna aircraft flight track.

 

One of the series of photos taken along aircraft track.

 

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