Arctic sea ice coverage has changed considerably over the last few; decades. Sea ice extent record minimums have been observed in recent; years, the distribution of sea ice age now heavily favors younger ice,; and sea ice is thinning. To investigate the response of the ice pack to; climate forcing during summertime melt, we have developed a technique to; track individual Arctic sea ice parcels along with associated properties; as these parcels advect through the Arctic Ocean. This sea ice parcel; tracking method utilizes our sea ice motion dataset, archived at NASA’s; National Snow and Ice Data Center. Tracked sea ice parcel locations; coincide with other environmental products that influence sea ice; growth/decay. We have recently tracked variables such as ice surface; temperature, albedo, ice concentration, and ice thickness for hundreds; of sea ice parcels, defined as occupying one EASE-grid cell location.; These parcels can be tracked through a melt season, to determine the; influence of these properties on sea ice melt, along with determining; what fraction of the parcels survive or don’t survive summer melt. This; analysis can be applied to determine the impact of these and other; properties on ice melt, in terms of their relative importance. Here, we; focus on tracking recent sea ice freeboard, produced from NASA’s; ICESat-2 observations. We look at the evolution of ice thickness for; individual parcels through the recent ICESat-2 record, to determine the; rate of ice growth over part or all of the winter, depending on product; availability (as of this writing, freeboard is available through Dec 27,; 2018). We determine how sea ice growth varies for hundreds of parcels,; and determine how growth is affected by location and time.
