The Accuracy of Sea Ice Drafts Measured from U.S. Navy Submarines

Abstract

Navy submarines in the Arctic Ocean routinely obtain observations from an upward-looking sonar of the draft of the sea ice cover overhead. Draft data are now publicly available from some 40 cruises from 1975 to 2000 covering over 120 000 km of track in roughly the central half of the Arctic Ocean. To apply these observations to geophysics, error estimates are needed. This paper assesses how well the correction of the data during normal processing accounts for the major sources of error in the draft data from U.S. Navy submarines and what errors remain in the data. The error treated is the error for the average draft over tens of kilometers. The following sources of error are considered: measurement precision error; errors in identifying open water (as ice of zero draft); sound speed error; errors caused by variable sonar footprint size, by uncontrolled gain and thresholds, and by ship?s trim; and differences between data from analog charts and digitally recorded data. The bias with respect to the actual draft is +29 cm and is important both for knowing the actual ice draft and for comparing drafts from submarines with thicknesses in models and with draft, thickness, or freeboard estimated by other vehicles and technologies. The standard deviation is 25 cm. This number estimates the repeatability and comparability of draft measurements by U.S. Navy submarines and is important for examining the submarine data for regional and temporal variation. These errors are tolerable for an operational data source with a signal many meters in amplitude.