Currently available sea ice thickness retrieval algorithms are compromised in summer in the presence of melt. This study presents a new approach to estimate sea ice thickness in summer in the presence of melt ponds. Analysis of field data obtained during RV “Polarstern” cruise ARK27/3 (August - October 2012) has shown a clear connection of ice thickness under melt ponds to their measured spectral albedo and to saturation value in the HSL colour space from field photographs. An empirical function has been derived from the data, which gives a possibility to access sea ice thickness information stored in the historic dataset of in situ imagery. A similar function has been applied to aerial imagery. The presented approach can be used (1) as fast, non-intrusive method to estimate sea ice thickness in situ; (2) for general circulation model input, validation, ice mass balance estimate; (3) for assessing summer sea ice thickness dynamics from historic data to be used in the context of Arctic change.
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Istomina et al. (2016) studied this question.