Faster tracking of Arctic sea-ice thickness improves environmental monitoring

Nature : Since satellite records began in 1979, Arctic sea ice has been steadily disappearing. And the recent El Niño and Arctic Oscillation are exacerbating the situation. Until now, efforts to monitor ice extent and thickness have been plagued by the lag times involved in collecting satellite data and calculating the satellites’ precise positions when they gathered the data. To speed up the process, Rachel Tilling of University College London and her colleagues combine CryoSat-2 satellite data with near-real-time information from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center and the Norwegian Meteorological Service. As a result, they’ve cut the time required to analyze the data to just three days, and their results have been shown to match those produced months later. Tilling’s team is then able to communicate ice-thickness measurements much more quickly to scientists predicting short-term weather and long-term climate trends.