IARC
EarthServer Datacube Federation Member
About
The extent and distribution of Arctic sea ice has changed since 1850, as can be seen from a rich atlas of observational data that starts with whaling ships and continues through the satellite era. At the same time, global climate models continue to evolve to illuminate possible conditions in the future.
Two data services available through the NATO SPS Cube4EnvSec project, in collaboration with the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks provide access to these data.
Datacube Offering
The Historical Sea Ice service is regularly updated with the most current data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the USA (product NSIDC-0051) and contains a monthly estimate of sea ice fraction across the Arctic.Ship logs, station descriptions and later satellite imagery is interpolated and compiled into a single, coherent data product that can be used to study trends over time.
The CMIP6 Climate Indicators service provides access for four "indicators," derived measures from climate variables (temperature, precipitation) from 13 global climate models which were found to be high-performing in the Arctic. These indicators include:
- Freeze/thaw: number of days when the maximum/minimum temperatures go above and below freezing
- Summer days: count of the number of days in a year when the temperature exceeds 25ºC
- Deep winter days: count of the number of days in a year when the temperature is below -30ºC
- Maximum 1-day precipitation: maximum precipitation in a single day in a calendar year
These climate model outputs are available for four future social and emission scenarios, known as SSPs. Data are available on an annual basis between 1950 and 2100 at a 100km spatial resolution.