Arctic Snow Has Drastically Thinned on Sea Ice Over the Past Few Decades

As the climate changes, the Arctic is experiencing more impacts than ever before. Now, scientists have found that over the past several decades, snow cover has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

Historically, scientists on drifting sea ice used meter sticks and handwritten logs to record snow depth. Today, though, researchers use an automated probe similar to a ski pole in order to verify the accuracy of airborne measurements collected by NASA aircraft. In order to better understand the complete history of snow cover in the area, the scientists combined historic data with more modern measurements .

More specifically, the scientists compared data from NASA airborne surveys, collected between 2009 and 2013, with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers buoys frozen into the sea ice, and earlier data from Soviet drifting ice stations.

In the end, the researchers found that snowpack has thinned from 14 inches to 9 inches in the western Arctic, and from 13 inches to 6 inches in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in west and north of Alaska. In all, it just took a few short decades, from the late 1930s to modern day, for this to occur.

"Knowing exactly the error between the airborne and ground measurements, we're able to say with confidence, yes, the snow is decreasing in the Beaufort and Chukchi sease," said Ignatius Rigor, co-author of the new study, in a news release.

It's possible that this thinner snow could be due to the fact that surface freeze-up is happening later in the autumn due to warmer temperatures. The effects that this thinning snow might have on the Arctic ecosystem are uncertain. Yet snow does provide material to animals to make dens and can help low-light microscopic plants grow underneath sea ice.

The findings reveal that snow is indeed thinning in the Arctic. That said, more research is needed before scientists can conclude exactly what effects this thinning snow might have on the ecosystem at large.

The findings are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.