The layer of sea ice that caps the Arctic Ocean hits its maximum thickness during the long, dark polar night that accompanies winter.
The layer of sea ice that caps the Arctic Ocean hits its maximum thickness during the long, dark polar night that accompanies winter. When sunlight and warmer temperatures return in spring, the ice pack thins and breaks up as currents and winds funnel ice floes south through narrow outlets on the eastern and western edges of Greenland.
For decades, experts have tracked the state of the ice from spring to fall as the melt season unfolds, using satellite data to measure sea ice extent and concentration. They did so as usual in 2024, but a team of NASA-sponsored researchers also had a rare opportunity that year to travel to northern Greenland to study little-understood aspects of the melt season up close.
As part of the field campaign, called the Arctic Radiation-Cloud-Aerosol-Surface Interaction Experiment (ARCSIX), three NASA aircraft—the low-flying P-3 Orion and the high-flying Gulfstream III and Learjet 35—deployed for three weeks in May and June and again for a month in July and August. Scientists from several institutions, including the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Michigan, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Arizona, and Colorado State University, participated.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Wanmei Liang
