Pan-Arctic daily under-ice light maps from 2011 to 2022
GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/02146
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Summary
Abstract:
The Pan-Arctic daily under-ice maps within this dataset provide an estimation of the amount of light (as Photosynthetically Active Radiation [PAR]) available at the bottom of the sea ice at a pan-Arctic scale and were produce for the years where all satellite data necessary was available (sea ice thickness, concentration, snow depth, downwelling irradiance, albedo). All maps are on the pan-Arctic scale and available daily. There are three different type of maps produced using different sea ice thickness estimates: CryoSat-2 (CS2), CryoSat-2+Sentinel-3 (CS2S3) and ICESat-2 (IS2). The light maps based on CS2 are available for the months of January, February, March and April from 2011 to 2022; the light maps based on CS2S3 are available for the months of January, February, March and April, for 2019 and 2020. Finally, the light maps based on IS2 are available for the months of January, February, March, April, May, June and July from 2019 to 2022.
This dataset resulted from the NERC project (NE/R012725/1) Eco-Light, part of the Changing Arctic Ocean programme, jointly funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Keywords:
Light, PAR, pan-Arctic, satellite imagery, under-ice
Citation
Veyssiere, G., Stroeve, J., & Wilkinson, J. (2026). Pan-Arctic daily under-ice light maps from 2011 to 2022 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/9abc9118-fa95-4dc0-bccd-0ac6c322cb25
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Constraints
| Access Constraints: | No restrictions apply. |
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| Use Constraints: | Data supplied under Open Government Licence v3.0 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/. |
Basic Information
| Creation Date: | 2026-01-29 |
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| Dataset Progress: | Complete |
| Dataset Language: | English |
| ISO Topic Categories: |
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| Parameters: |
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| Personnel: | |
| Name | UK Polar Data Centre |
| Role(s) | Metadata Author |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Gaelle A Veyssiere |
| Role(s) | Investigator, Technical Contact |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Julienne C Stroeve |
| Role(s) | Investigator |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Name | Jeremy Wilkinson |
| Role(s) | Investigator |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Parent Dataset: | N/A |
Additional Information
| Reference: | Stroeve Julienne , Vancoppenolle Martin , Veyssiere Gaelle , Lebrun Marion , Castellani Giulia , Babin Marcel , Karcher Michael , Landy Jack , Liston Glen E. , Wilkinson Jeremy. (2021) A Multi-Sensor and Modeling Approach for Mapping Light Under Sea Ice During the Ice-Growth Season. Frontiers in Marine Science. Volume 7 - 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.592337 | |
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| Quality: | The products have a grid cell resolution 25 km. The dataset is provided in an equal area (EASE) grid projection. | |
| Lineage/Methodology: | The under-ice PAR data was estimated using a set of satellite imagery as inputs together with a model output of the snow depth and a radiative transfer approach. The complete description of each input and method can be found in Stroeve et al. (2020). The snow depth is generated by SnowModel-LG with the use of reanalysis data as input. The satellite imagery used for the different inputs is listed below: - Sea ice thickness: CryoSat-2, Sentinel 3 and IceSat-2 - Sea ice concentration: Passive microwave (NSIDC) - Albedo and downwelling irradiance: data from AVHRR Temporal coverage: CryoSat-2: Daily; January to April; 2011 to 2022 CryoSat-2 + Sentinel 3: Daily; January to April; 2019 and 2020 ICESat-2: Daily; January to July; 2019 to 2022 The radiative transfer approach used to estimate the light is an exponential decay following the Beer-Lambert's law with parameterisations adapted to Arctic conditions (see Stroeve et al., 2020). All maps were generated using Python 3. |
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Locality
| Temporal Coverage: | |
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| Start Date | 2011-01-01 |
| End Date | 2022-07-31 |
| Spatial Coverage: | |
| Latitude | |
| Southernmost | 30 |
| Northernmost | 90 |
| Longitude | |
| Westernmost | -180 |
| Easternmost | 180 |
| Altitude | |
| Min Altitude | N/A |
| Max Altitude | N/A |
| Depth | |
| Min Depth | N/A |
| Max Depth | N/A |
| Location: | |
| Location | Arctic |
| Detailed Location | Arctic Ocean |
Storage
| Distribution: | |
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| Distribution Media | Online Internet (HTTP) |
| Distribution Size | 1.2 GB |
| Distribution Format | netCDF |
| Fees | N/A |
| Data Storage: | The files are provided in netCDF format. Each file represents a month of pan-Arctic under-ice light maps. Inside the file, the latitude and longitude are provided as variables 'lat' and 'lon' with 361(x) x 361(y) grid cells. The variable 'Under-ice PAR' is the data, has the same spatial dimension as the latitude and longitude, and a supplementary 'time' dimension in days. |