Webinar: Historical Sea Ice Atlas for Alaska Waters
A new, web-based atlas designed to let users view historical sea ice data collected between the mid-1800s and today.
The Atlas is compiled for display on an interactive map of the seas surrounding northern Alaska. The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP, a RISA program) will host a webinar explaining their new Historic Sea Ice Atlas tool on Tuesday, Feb. 18 from 10 to 11a.m. AKST (2 to 3 p.m. EST). John Walsh of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Lena Krutikov from the Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning will present.
Coastal communities, marine navigation, industry (fishing, tourism, offshore resource extraction), the military, and Earth/Arctic system science research have all expressed a clear need for an Alaska sea ice atlas. Indeed, many requests for historical and climatological sea ice information for Alaska coastal waters presently go unanswered because such an atlas does not exist. The availability of GIS software, in-house expertise and historical databases extending back to the 1850s makes the construction of an Alaska sea ice atlas timely and feasible. The atlas consists of digitally-stored sea ice concentration data on a grid covering all Alaska coastal waters to a distance of ~500 km (300 mi) from shore, with a spatial resolution of 25 km. The time resolution is monthly for the period 1850s-1950s, and weekly for the period from the early 1950s to 2010 with the allowance of subsequent updates.
To register for the webinar, visit: https://accap.uaf.edu
To learn more about the atlas, visit: http://seaiceatlas.snap.uaf.edu/