HISTORICAL RESPONSE OF ICE COVER ON LARGE LAKES OF NORTHERN CANADA, DERIVED FROM SMMR AND SSM/I (1979-2015)

Abstract:

Lakes that form a seasonal ice cover are a significant part of the terrestrial landscape. Ice cover presence/absence (and extent) on large northern lakes influences both regional climate and weather events (e.g. thermal moderation and lake-effect snowfall). Ice phenology parameters such as freeze-onset (FO)/melt-onset (MO), ice-on/ice-off dates, and ice cover duration (ICD) are useful climate data records as they are sensitive to variability and changes in air temperature and, to a lesser extent, on ice snow depth. Given the poor spatial/temporal coverage of ground-based lake ice observations in many northern countries, remote sensing has been assuming a greater role in observing lake ice phenology, and for investigating the response and role of ice cover in lake-atmosphere interactions. Spaceborne passive microwave instruments operating since the late 1970s present an invaluable data source for assessing the response of ice cover on large northern lakes to climate.

The primary objective of this study was to develop new ice phenology retrieval algorithms (H-pol) from SSM/I 19.35 GHz brightness temperature measurements (1987-2015), and 18.00 GHz T_B data (1979-1987) from SMMR over four large northern lakes in Canada: Great Bear Lake (GBL) and Great Slave Lake (GSL) in the Mackenzie River Basin as well as Lake Nettiling, and Lake Amadjuak on Baffin Island in the eastern Canadian Arctic. The second objective consisted of analyzing trends in the derived ice phenology time series (SMMR and SSM/I combined). From the preliminary analysis (1979-2013), FO and ice-on dates were found to occur later on both GBL (6 d decade^-1 and 4 d decade^-1) and GSL (4 d decade^-1 and 2 d decade^-1). Trends in MO are positive (later) by 4 d decade^-1 in GSL while ice-off date and ICD show negative trends (earlier ice-off and shorter ICD) of -2 d decade^-1 and -3 d decade^-1, respectively, for both GBL and GSL.