Reflection and transmission of irradiance by snow and sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean in summer 2010

• DOI: 10.3402/polar.v31i0.17325
• Publication Date: 2012-04-02T06:44:56Z
• Authors: Ruibo Lei; Zhanhai Zhang; Ilkka Matero; Bin Cheng; Qun Li; Wenfeng Huang
• Keywords: Snow field; Albedo (alchemy)

Reflection and transmission of irradiance by the combined snow sea ice layer were measured at an camp (ca. 10 days) several short-term stations 2 h) established in western sector Arctic Ocean above 80°N during 2010 summer. These measurements made with intention to quantify apparent optical properties ice, evaluate their roles mass balance snow-covered High Arctic. The integrated 350–920 nm albedo ranged from 0.54 0.88, was primarily dependent on geophysical snow, but not those ice. This implies that all cover still optically thick, even though melting had commenced measurement sites. For about 1.66 m thick covered 2.5–8.5 cm camp, transmittance 0.017 0.065. Rapid resulting event slight drizzle doubled available solar under (from ca. 3.6 toca. 7.2 W·m–2), which further accelerated ice-bottom decay. During temporally averaged incident 320–950 110.6 ± 33.6 W·m–2, 29.2 2.9% absorbed utilized melt a distinctly greater effect spectral reflection for near-infrared spectrum than ultraviolet visible spectra.Keywords: Sea ice; snow; irradiance; reflection; transmission; Arctic(Published: 30 March 2012)Citation: Polar Research 2012, 31, 17325, DOI: 10.3402/polar.v31i0.17325