Arctic Ocean–Sea Ice–Climate Interactions - The Arctic Climate System - page 224

Figure 7.9. Estimated distribution of mean winter sea ice thickness (meters) in the
Arctic (from Bourke and Garrett, 1987 , by permission of Elsevier).
those of FYI and MYI. Although the fields for each year show the expected pattern
of thinner ice along the Eurasian side of the Arctic Ocean and thicker ice along the
northern shore of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and northern Greenland, there is
considerable variability from year to year. Depending on the year, the peak proba-
bility of MYI thickness is from 3.1 m to 2.8 m, while that for FYI ranges from 1.7 m
to 1.6 m. The notable feature of all of the PDFs is the long tail of lower probabilities
of thick ice classes resulting from deformation. Based on multiple lines of evidence,
ranging from comparisons between sea ice draft data collected during submarine
cruises between 1993 and 1997 with earlier records (1958-1976) (Rothrock et al.,
1999 ), analysis of satellite-tracked ice age ( Figure 7.4 ), studies of the complete
ICESat record going back to 2003, and modeling (e.g., Rothrock, Zhang, and Yu,
2003 ), ice thicknesses for the years shows in Figure 7.10 are generally lower than
for previous decades.