Antarctic sea-ice freshwater fluxes associated with freezing, transport, and melting

This data set provides estimates of annual fresh water fluxes related to sea-ice formation from ocean freezing and snow-ice formation, sea-ice melting, lateral transport of sea ice in the Southern Ocean over the period 1982 to 2008.It is derived from a mass balance calculation of local sea-ice volume change and divergence from satellite data and sea-ice reconstructions. The mass balance is calculated on a daily basis and fluxes are then integrated over the entire year, where a year is defined from March to February of the next year (i.e. from March 1982 to February 2009). This approach combines multiple products of sea-ice concentration (Cavalieri & Parkinson, 2008;Comiso, 1986; Meier et al., 2013), sea-ice thickness (Kurtz & Markus, 2012; Massonnet et al., 2013; Worby et al., 2008), and sea-ice drift (Fowler et al., 2013; Kwok 2005; Schwegmann et al., 2011). For a detailed description of the method see Haumann et al. (2016). The data set is derived to estimate large-scale (regional to basin-scale) fluxes on an annual basis. Our confidence is reduced on a grid cell basis, such as for single coastal polynyas, where the method and underlying data induce large, unknown uncertainties.