Tracking the Movement and Changing Surface Characteristics of Arctic Sea Ice

A technique to track the location and motion of sea ice parcels in the Arctic Ocean has been developed. This method blends the observations of passive microwave satellite imagery with buoy motions to yield a daily motion product. Ancillary information derived from collocated satellite data enables researchers to track the evolution of ice characteristics as it advects through the Arctic Ocean. Because this ice dataset spans over 20 years, age of the ice can also be estimated, and results show that the recent Arctic ice pack contains a larger fraction of younger ice than the pack contained 20 years ago.