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Sea‐ice draft from submarine‐based sonar: Establishing a consistent record from analog and digitally recorded data
Author(s) -
Wensnahan Mark,
Rothrock D. Andrew
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2005gl022507
Subject(s) - submarine , navy , hull , submarine pipeline , histogram , chart , sonar , geology , remote sensing , geodesy , computer science , statistics , oceanography , artificial intelligence , mathematics , geography , archaeology , image (mathematics)
Measurements of arctic sea‐ice draft have been taken by Navy submarines for nearly five decades. The data are in two inherently different forms, analog paper charts and digitally recorded data. “Raw” analog drafts digitized from paper charts are biased toward thicker ice by over 30 cm compared with the digital drafts. This is due to the coarser temporal resolution of the paper charts compared the digital data. We examine coincident analog and digital data to determine how they can be made equivalent in mean draft and draft distribution (the histogram of draft vs. fractional frequency of observation). Image processing techniques are used to thin vertical features in the scanned chart images; this produces a “final” analog mean draft that is essentially unbiased (2 ± 6 cm) relative to the digital mean and final draft distributions that are in good agreement.