North Slave Lake Ice Thickness and Phenology retrieved from a thermodynamic model, 1984 to 2022

It was produced using lake surface temperature data (North Slave LST) derived from the Landsat satellite series, in combination with gridded reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' Reanalysis v5 (ERA5).

Key atmospheric and surface variables, including wind speed (m s⁻¹), relative humidity (%), snow depth (m), and cloud cover, were extracted from ERA5 and used as input variables for the model. These inputs, together with the Landsat-derived lake surface temperatures, drive a lake ice model that simulates daily ice thickness for each 50-meter satellite pixel across the lake surface. The model outputs include daily lake ice thickness and key ice phenology indicators, such as annual freeze-up and break-up dates, for each lake.