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Measurements of the thickness of sea ice and the depth of its snow cover allow us to calculate how their mass changes in response to the varying fluxes of heat between the ocean and atmosphere over the course of a season. Repeated drill measurements are not ideal for this purpose since each drill hole disturbs the ice and its insulating snow cover. Also, spatial variability in ice thickness can mask temporal changes if holes are not drilled in the same place each time. Hence, methods that do not require re-drilling are preferred. Automated systems such as the Seasonal Ice Mass-balance Buoy (SIMB; Planck et al, 2019) provide high temporal resolution for capturing sub-daily variations and typically include sensor strings to measure the vertical temperature profile from the air to the ocean, which can be used to infer other properties of the ice cover such as strength and porosity.

Under the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER (BLE LTER) research program, several SIMBs are deployed at sites along the Beaufort Sea coast and record a suite of parameters including but not limited to snow depth, ice thickness, position of ice surface and bottom, water/air temperature, and vertical profiles of temperature.

Planck, C. J., J. Whitlock, C. Polashenski, and D. Perovich (2019), The evolution of the seasonal ice mass balance buoy, Cold Regions Science and Technology, 165, 102792, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2019.102792.