2012 minimum global sea ice area

We have a pretty accurate 2D view of the Arctic sea ice, and some clues with regards to its third dimension: thickness. It's the thickness of the ice that determines the influence of atmospheric conditions on the ice pack, and is thus a crucial factor in the amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean during any given time, especially towards the end of the melting season. But also during the freezing season sea ice thickness plays an important role as an intermediary between sea surface and atmosphere. The thinner the ice is, the more heat and moisture can be transferred from one to the other, which in turn influences atmospheric patterns.

image on the top right, courtesy of NSIDC

The importance of accurate sea ice thickness measurements is not lost on the scientific community. We've had ICESat, we eagerly await the end of the calibration phase of the CryoSat-2 mission, and in the meantime another handy tool for measuring ice thickness has been devised by scientists from the University of Hamburg, using a passive microwave sensor aboard the ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite.

images retrieved from the SMOSIce wiki (with permission of L. Kaleschke)

The news was announced two months ago in an ESA press release, but has now been followed up by a research paper that has just been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters: Kaleschke, L., X. Tian-Kunze, N. Maaß, M. Mäkynen, and M. Drusch (2012), Sea ice thickness retrieval from SMOS brightness temperatures during the Arctic freeze-up period.
From the abstract:

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