This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And although that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists began preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness. The researchers spent two
This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And although that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists began preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness.
The researchers spent two weeks in April flying over the Arctic Ocean, often observing the sunrise from an altitude of 1,500 feet (457 meters) in a World War II aircraft. On board the plane were a variety of cutting-edge sensors used to measure the thickness of sea ice and snow, including a replacement for the microwave radiometer now being tested at JPL. Measuring the thickness of sea ice is complicated and requires a number of precise figures, including the height to which the sea ice rises above the water, the depth of the snow on that ice, and microwave emissions from the surface.
The flights were scheduled according to the passage of satellites overhead, so that coordinated observations of the same characteristics could be taken. Combining aerial and satellite data will improve scientists’ ability to measure sea ice and understand how climate conditions are evolving across the Arctic.
In recent decades, the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice have changed. Improving measurements of those changes helps scientists better understand the Arctic system while supporting navigation, meteorological and ocean research, and future satellite observations. As shipping activity in the Arctic increases, the region is also becoming more strategically and economically important.
According to JPL’s Sahra Kacimi, who served as the field campaign’s science lead, current warming in the Arctic could potentially affect public safety and economic interests.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Kacimi has spent years studying sea ice using satellite data, but the top-down view he gets from space is different than looking out the window of an airplane.
The bewildering diversity of sea ice creates otherworldly landscapes. Ice may be attached to land or drifting in the ocean; It can be rough or smooth. Driven by winds and ocean currents, ice is constantly moving, breaking and deforming. Cracks can open up into long stretches of exposed ocean, and collisions between icebergs can push ice debris into huge ridges that stretch for miles.
Some sea ice lasts only one season, while thicker ice can survive for several years (although multi-year sea ice is becoming less common in many parts of the Arctic). Entire ecosystems are affected by these changes, right down to the arctic foxes and hares that the scientists observed during the trip.
Improving sea ice thickness estimates helps scientists better understand how the region is changing and supports long-term observations of the Arctic environment. The NASA team spent about 50 hours in the air during the two-week campaign, conducting flights over drifting ice near the city of Inuvik before studying ice attached to the coast of another location, a village called Cambridge Bay.
For the Inuvik portion of the campaign, the team coordinated with the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a satellite jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), with JPL leading the U.S. component of the mission. Although it was designed to map the height of the world’s sea and fresh water, SWOT can also measure the amount of sea ice above the waterline.
In Cambridge Bay, the NASA team was joined by researchers from ESA (European Space Agency), Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute and Canada’s University of Calgary. During this part of the campaign, coordinated flights flew over a camp and passed under the footprints of satellite missions such as NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) and ESA’s CryoSat-2.
To improve estimates of sea ice thickness, ESA is developing, with the cooperation of NASA, a new polar mission called Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter (CRISTAL). During the April air campaign, scientists flew instruments similar to those CRISTAL will carry, including the microwave radiometer now being tested at JPL.
“Combining observations from space, airborne and Earth surface instruments is essential to develop and validate algorithms for current and future missions,” Kacimi said.
For the scientists it was also an opportunity to meet locals who see the changes in the Arctic up close. Kacimi spoke with community leaders and students at a STEM camp about how the disappearing ice is affecting their communities.
“I’m used to looking at sea ice from space and thinking about its role in global climate, but for people who live in the Arctic, it has a much deeper meaning,” Kacimi said.
Media contacts
andres good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Liz Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
2026-043
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