DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18273881
title: NASA Eulerian Snow On Sea Ice Model Version 1.1 (NESOSIMv1.1) data: 1980 - 2025

description: Repository updates

Update on Jan 16th 2026: The repository now includes NESOSIM v1.1 output from September 1st 2024 to April 30th 2025.

Update on Sep 12th 2024: The repository now includes NESOSIM v1.1 output from September 1st 2022 to April 30th 2023 and September 1st 2023 to April 30th 2024 

Update on Sep 5th 2022: The repository now includes NESOSIM v1.1 output from September 1st 2021 to April 30th 2022

Update on June 7th 2022: The repository now includes NESOSIM v1.1 output from September 1st 2021 to March 31st 2022

Update on March 8th 2021: The gridded forcing files are now available in the gridded_forcings.zip file. Data are stored as Python pickles which can be easily read in by the core NESOSIM source code. 

Update on March 8th 2021: The repository now includes zip files of gridded forcing (snowfall, winds, ice drift, ice concentration, initial conditions) as well as gridded Operation IceBridge snow depths. 

Update on January 30th 2021: The repository now also includes a NESOSIM v1.1. daily gridded snow climatology using the mean (np.nanmean) of all data available between September 1 2010 and April 30 2020.

Overview

NESOSIM is a three-dimensional, two-layer (vertical), Eulerian snow on sea ice budget model developed with the primary aim of producing daily estimates of the depth and density of snow on sea ice across the polar oceans through the winter accumulation season, generally September through April (Petty et al., 2018).

This repository contains model output from September 1st 1980 to April 30th 2021 [and September 1st 2021 to March 31st 2022 as of June 7th 2022] based on the NESOSIM v1.1 code release which is available on GitHub (https://github.com/akpetty/NESOSIM/tree/v1.1) and archived through Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.4448355). More information about changes between the v1.0 and v1.1 model framework can be found in those links.

A preprint is now available in The Cryosphere Discuss explaining these upgrades and their impacts on ICESat-2 winter Arctic sea ice thickness estimates (Petty et al., 2022). 

Data production:

Data are re-initialized at the end of summer each year (September 1st) using summer near-surface air temperature-scaled initial snow depths and run through until the end of April of the following year. The 1987-1988 winter is missing due to the lack of passive-microwave derived ice concentration data available during this period. Daily data are generated on a 100 km x 100 km North Polar Stereographic grid (EPSG: 3413) across the entire Arctic Ocean including the peripheral seas.

Forcings:

NB: Recent year runs often require the use of near-real-time data products, so the underlying forcings used in this v1.1 release can change in time, as noted below:



Snowfall: European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 (https://cds. climate.copernicus.eu, September 1 1980 onwards2) + CloudSat scaling (Cabaj et al., 2020).

Near-surface winds: ECMWF ERA5 (https://cds. climate.copernicus.eu, September 1 1980 onwards).

Sea ice drift: NSIDC Polar Pathfinder v4 (https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0116, September 1 1980 to April 30 2019), OSI SAF merged (https://osi-saf.eumetsat.int/products/osi-405-c, September 1 2019 onwards).

Sea ice concentration: Final v3 NSIDC Climate Data Record (https://nsidc.org/data/g02202/versions/3/, September 1 1980 to December 31 2020), and near-real-time v2 NSIDC Climate Data Record (https://nsidc.org/data/g10016, January 1 2021 onwards).

Near-surface air temperature (to derive temperature-scaled initial conditions): ECMWF ERA5 (https://cds. climate.copernicus.eu, September 1 1980 onwards).


The forcings used to generate each winter dataset are described in a new 'forcings' variable in each NetCDF file. 

Operation IceBridge snow depths:

The repository now also includes the gridded Operation IceBridge snow depths we used for calibration purposes, as described in Petty et al., (2022). The data contained within gridded_oib_snowdepths.zip includes the daily gridded data on the NESOSIM v1.1 100 km domain, ordered by day of collection. Data are stored as Python pickles and text files and include estimates derived from the following snow depth algorithms: SRLD (2009-2015): snow radar layer detection, JPL (2009-2015): Jet Propulsion Laboratory, GSFC (2009-2015): Goddard Space Flight Center, NSIDC (2009-2012): archived NASA GSFC data on the NSIDC, QL (2013-2019): NSIDC quick-look data based on the GSFC algorithm. MEDIAN (2010-2015): consensus snow depth from median of GSFC, JPL and SRLD. 

References:

Cabaj, A., P. J. Kushner, C. G. Fletcher, S. Howell, A. Petty (2020), Constraining reanalysis snowfall over the Arctic Ocean using CloudSat observations, Geophysical Research Letters, 47, doi:10.1029/2019GL086426.

Petty, A. A., M. Webster, L. N. Boisvert, T. Markus (2018), The NASA Eulerian Snow on Sea Ice Model (NESOSIM) v1.0: Initial model development and analysis, Geosci. Model Dev., doi: 10.5194/gmd-11-4577-2018.

Petty A. A., N. Keeney, A. Cabaj, P. Kushner, M. Bagnardi (2023), Winter Arctic sea ice thickness from ICESat-2: upgrades to freeboard and snow loading estimates and an assessment of the first three winters of data collection, The Cryosphere, 17, 127–156, doi: 10.5194/tc-17-127-2023.
description: The continued updates to NESOSIM v1.1 are now funded as part of an ICESat-2 Science Team award (grant number: 80NSSC23K1253) towards development of the ICESat-2 sea ice thickness products.