Report on Estimating Sea-ice Transport into the North Atlantic Using the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (amsr-e)

Using the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer sensor (AMSR-E), winter (October to May) sea ice area flux is estimated for the main channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Baffin Bay and Fram Strait. The transport through Fram Strait is estimated at 533,000 km 2 and 635,000 km 2 for the winter of 2002/03 and 2003/04 which is below the 24-year average of 754,000 km 2 obtained by Kwok et al. (2004) using earlier satellite microwave sensors. The error estimate using AMSR-E is 7300 km 2 which is a considerable improvement over for the earlier SSMI and SMMR sensors and is due to the improved resolution of the AMSR-E sensor. The average winter sea ice area flux over these two years for Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, Hudson Strait, Barrow Strait, and Lancaster Sound in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is 687,000, 605,000, 69,000, 39,000 and 16,000 km 2 respectively. Smaller channels such as Nares Strait, Smith Sound and Jones Sound could not be reliably estimated using AMSR-E sensor because these channels are too narrow.