Operational service for mapping the baltic sea landfast ice properties

Abstract

The Baltic Sea is partly covered by sea ice in every winter season. Landfast ice (LFI) on the Baltic Sea is a place for recreational activities such as skiing and ice fishing. Over thick LFI ice roads can be established between mainland and islands to speed up transportation compared to the use of ferries. LFI also allows transportation of material to or from islands without piers for large ships. For all these activities, information on LFI extent and sea ice thickness, snow thickness and degree of ice deformation on LFI is very important. We generated new operational products for these LFI parameters based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and existing products and prediction models on the Baltic Sea ice properties. The products are generated daily and have a 500 m pixel size. They are visualized in a web-portal titled “Baltic Sea landfast ice extent and thickness (BALFI)” which has free access. The BALFI service was started in Feb 2019. Before the BALFI service, information on the LFI properties in fine scale (<1 km) was not available from any single source or product. We studied the accuracy and quality of the BALFI products for the ice season 2019–2020 using ice charts and in-situ coastal ice station data. We suggest that the current products give usable information on the Baltic LFI properties for various end-users. We also identify some topics for the further development of the BALFI products.