Sea ice atlas.

• Position: INSIDE ALASKA BUSINESS

New sea ice atlas puts 160 years of data online. University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers and the Alaska Ocean Observing System have released the first digital atlas of historical sea ice concentrations in the Beaufort, Chukchi, and Bering seas.

This web-based tool allows users to view and download sea ice concentration data from 1850 to the present.

The university's Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy and the Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning created the sea ice atlas.

With funding support from AOOS, John Walsh, chief scientist at the UAF International Arctic Research Center, and Sarah Trainor, IARC's ACCAP director, led the project during the past two years. They worked in partnership with the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. IARC's SNAP maintains the data behind the sea ice atlas, which is complementary with other data available at AOOS.

The atlas uniquely provides digitized historical sea ice data compiled from more than ten sources, including the satellite record, various US Naval and National Ice Center compilations, Canadian records, Danish and Norwegian ship records, and whaling ship reports.

The interactive map allows users to select a date or a location to visualize how open water seasons have varied in a particular place. An animation shows changes in ice extent and concentration through time--year by year and decade by decade. The atlas...