# Initial assessment of all-season Arctic sea ice thickness from ICESat-2

## TL;DR

ICESat-2 provides reliable Arctic sea ice thickness estimates year-round, showing good agreement with other methods and validating well against field data.

## Contribution

The study introduces an all-season Arctic sea ice thickness assessment using ICESat-2 and SnowModel-LG, validated across multiple datasets.

## Key findings

- ICESat-2 captures key regional and seasonal Arctic sea ice patterns and agrees well with CryoSat-2 estimates.
- ICESat-2 shows consistently thicker ice in the western Arctic, while CryoSat-2 shows thicker ice in the Central Arctic during some periods.
- Validation against sonar, airborne, and buoy data confirms strong performance, though some seasonal biases remain.

## Abstract

We present an initial assessment of all-season Arctic sea ice thickness estimates from ICESat-2 by combining freeboard retrievals with all-season SnowModel-LG snow loading. ICESat-2 captures the key regional and seasonal patterns of Arctic sea ice variability and shows good agreement with CryoSat-2 all-season estimates, including regional patterns of inter-annual variability in summer ice thickness. ICESat-2 shows consistently thicker ice compared to CryoSat-2 across the western coastal Arctic, while CryoSat-2 shows some periods of thicker ice across the Central Arctic, largely consistent with winter thickness biases. Validation against upward-looking sonar moorings, IceBird-2019 airborne observations and MOSAiC buoy data highlights generally strong performance across a range of conditions, although seasonal biases linked to snow loading, freeboard differences and ice density assumptions persist. The SnowModel-LG and NESOSIM snow accumulation models perform well across the validation datasets, but do not consistently add skill beyond the modified Warren climatology. Experimental ICESat-2/CryoSat-2 dual altimetry winter snow depths show strong performance relative to existing products and future work should extend these into summer for further assessments. Overall, our analysis supports the viability of an all-season ICESat-2-derived thickness record.