Large scale air-borne sea ice thickness measurements

Public summary for the project: This project will measure the sea ice thickness off East Antarctica, over spatial scales up to hundreds of kilometers. Sea ice is a likely sensitive indicator of climate variations and change.

No large scale sea ice thickness measurements exist in the Antarctic. An estimation of trends of change in Antarctic sea ice thickness and volume is therefore not currently possible. To address this deficiency and to provide an independent data set for the validation of models and the calibration of remote-sensing data, we will conduct high accuracy air borne laser scanner measurements in the sea ice zone off East Antarctica.