Beaufort sea ice melt pond coverage from MODIS observations

During the summer melt season, melt ponds occupy up to half of the sea ice cover, significantly influencing the surface albedo and hence the rate of sea ice melt. A technique has been developed to utilize several channels from NASA's MODIS instrument to estimate the evolution of pond fraction during the 2002 Beaufort Sea summer melt season. This estimation is the first large-scale characterization of melt pond coverage in the Arctic. The study will also examine the 2003 and 2004 Beaufort melt seasons.

Mapping of the spatial coverage and temporal evolution of pond fraction has a variety of potential applications, including improvement of the treatment of albedo within models, serving as a climatic change signal through documentation of the interannual variability in melt processes, and quantifying the error introduced by ponds in ice concentrations derived from passive microwave imagery.

The results of this study will be archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, CO.