A statistical study of sea ice thickness and coverage in the Canadian Arctic

TL;DR

This study analyzes the statistical relationship between sea ice thickness and coverage in the Arctic from 1979 to 2021, highlighting significant thinning trends and their correlation with ice cover decline, using non-parametric trend analysis.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of sea ice thickness trends and their correlation with ice coverage, using publicly available multi-decadal data sets.

Findings

Sea ice thickness shows a statistically significant declining trend.

Sea ice thickness and coverage are strongly correlated.

Thinning of sea ice accelerates melting processes.

Abstract

The Arctic sea ice cover has significantly declined over the recent decades. The debate on whether this decline is caused by anthropogenic activity or internal cycles is still ongoing. However, despite this uncertainty, some physical factors reinforce this declining trend, one of which is sea ice thickness. The thinning of Arctic sea ice facilitates the melting of sea ice by reducing the heat capacity of the ice volume. The progression of this thinning can potentially accelerate sea ice loss. In this work, we attempt to understand the broad relationship of sea ice cover levels and average sea ice thickness in the Arctic. First, we attempt to understand whether the trend in the Arctic sea ice thickness is statistically significant over multi-year and inter-year seasonal scales, by using mostly non-parametric trend analysis tools. We subsequently study how sea ice thickness, as well as its momentum and fluctuations, are statistically correlated to those of sea ice cover in the Arctic. For this task, we use publicly available Arctic sea ice cover and thickness data from 1979 to 2021, provided by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modelling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).