Evaluations of the Navy's ACNFS versus NASA IceBridge Data

NASA launched Operation IceBridge to provide polar snow and ice observations between the end of ICESat in 2010 and the launch of ICESat-2 (expected in 2016). IceBridge data are collected from multiple airborne instruments on flights over the polar regions. The U.S. Navy Arctic Cap Nowcast/Forecast System (ACNFS) is a high resolution (3.5 km in arctic region north of 75N, extending to 9 km at 40N), two way coupled model between the Community Ice CodE (CICE) and the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). ACNFS is forced with the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) 3- hourly atmospheric forcing and assimilates ocean data via Navy Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation (NCODA). In this talk recent IceBridge “Quicklook” data from March and April 2012 are used as a benchmark to compare with ice thickness, snow depth, and surface temperature results from ACNFS.