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

Alek Petty , Jack Landy, Alex Cabaj

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 moor- ings, 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 assump- tions 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 ex- isting products and future work should extend these into summer for fur- ther assessments. Overall, our analysis supports the viability of an all-season ICESat-2-derived thickness record.