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. We examine the variability of sea ice freeboard, snowdepth, and ice thickness in three years (2011, 2014, and 2016) of repeatsurveys of an IceBridge (OIB) transect across the Weddell Sea. Averaged overthis transect, ice thickness ranges from 2.40±1.07 (2011) to2.60±1.15 m (2014) and snow depth from 35.8±11.5 (2016) to43.6±10.2 cm (2014), suggesting a highly variable but broadly thickerice cover compared to that inferred from drilling and ship-basedmeasurements. Spatially, snow depth and ice thickness are higher in the moredeformed ice of the western Weddell. The impact of undersampling the thinend of the snow depth distribution on the regional statistics, due to theresolution of the snow radar, is assessed. Radar freeboards (uncompensatedfor snow thickness) from CryoSat-2 (CS-2) sampled along the same transectare consistently higher (by up to 8 cm) than those computed using OIB data.This suggests radar scattering that originates above the snow–ice interface,possibly due to salinity in the basal layer of the snow column.Consequently, sea ice thicknesses computed using snow depth estimates solelyfrom differencing OIB and CS-2 freeboards (without snow radar) are thereforegenerally higher; mean differences in sea ice thickness along a transect areup to ∼0.6 m higher (in 2014). This analysis is relevant tothe use of differences between ICESat-2 and CS-2 freeboards to estimate snowdepth for ice thickness calculations. Our analysis also suggests that, evenwith these expected biases, this is an improvement over the assumption thatsnow depth is equal to the total freeboard, with which the underestimation ofthickness could be up to a meter. Importantly, better characterization ofthe source of these biases is critical for obtaining improved estimates andunderstanding the limits of retrievals of Weddell Sea ice thickness fromsatellite altimeters.

Three years of sea ice freeboard, snow depth, and ice thickness of the Weddell Sea from Operation IceBridge and CryoSat-2