Operational Sea Ice Decision Support Rendered to RV Sikuliaq and RV Norseman II by the National Weather Service’s Alaska Sea Ice Program & U.S. National Ice Center

The National Weather Service’s Alaska Sea Ice Program (ASIP) and U.S National Ice Center (USNIC) have intersecting responsibilities for sea ice analysis and forecasting that require cooperation in order to fulfill a mission of protecting life and property.

Here we highlight and discuss two different situations where USNIC and ASIP coordinated sea ice decision support: 1) In the fall of 2023, an ASIP analyst embedded aboard a planned Office of Naval Research science expedition of the R/V Sikuliaq provided in situ analysis of sea ice conditions with reachback support to shore based ASIP and USNIC analysts. These deployments required coordination in obtaining multiple types of low latency and commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR), namely Radarsat-2 and Iceye imagery. 2) During the first week of June 2024, the R/V Norseman II, was disabled while operating within the pack ice off of the western coast of Alaska, near Shishmaref. Providing tactical, impact-based decision support services to the U.S. Geological Survey’s personnel aboard the R/V Norseman II and nearby U.S. Coast Guard vessels who were responding on the Norseman II’s behalf, required close collaboration between ASIP analysts and the USNIC imagery order desk. The resulting SAR imagery support was able to capture rapidly changing ice conditions in high spatial and temporal resolution. These scenarios highlight the importance of supporting a growing number of complex scientific expeditions to the Arctic, maintaining the ability to embed experts onto ships, and responding to emerging situations as vessel traffic in the Arctic becomes more numerous with a longer melt season.

The USNIC is a tri-agency organization composed of U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and NOAA, which is resourced to provide global to tactical scale ice and snow products, ice forecasting, and other environmental intelligence services for the United States government. NWS ASIP partners with the USNIC by providing expertise on the complex regional sea ice dynamics, which are fundamental in managing the demands of fulfilling decision support service needs in near coastal Alaskan waters and for unique local communities.