About ASIWG

The CliC Arctic Sea Ice Working Group (ASIWG) concentrates on improving the coordination between the sea-ice observation and modeling communities to establish protocols for standardizing and archiving data across the different national and international activities.

The establishment of a CliC Arctic Sea-Ice Working Group complements ASPeCt in arctic regions. This working group is initially focused on improving the coordination of surface-based sea-ice and snow observations, establishing protocols for standardizing and archiving data across the different national and international activities, and linking partners to ensure that functional, sustained observing networks are established for long-term observation and monitoring of these regions.

Progress in observations should be continued in the area of assimilation of the variety of sea-ice observations into coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models. This will contribute to creating a basis for global ocean and climate system re-analysis.

Goals and Objectives

The goals of the Climate and Cryosphere Arctic Sea Ice Working Group (ASIWG) are:

Develop, standardize, and implement observation and measurement protocols for Arctic sea ice in coastal, seasonal, and perennial ice zones

Integrate surface-based observations with remote sensing and modeling efforts

Establish and foster connections between international groups involved in sea ice observations, modeling, remote sensing, and data assimilation.

Our goals will be achieved by establishing community-based standardized experiment designs, forcing data, and deliverable output variables, as well as the defining of deadlines, milestones and deliverables.

20250323_100314_cropped — ASIWG members gathered at Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 in Boulder, CO

Contact info

Ioanna Merkouriadi, Chair

ioanna.merkouriadi@fmi.fi

Melinda Webster, Chair Emeritus

melindaw@uw.edu

More Resources

Leadership & Members

Past Workshops

NPICEcruiseinRijpfjord — The first ICE cruise from Rijpfjorden, Svalbard to the edge of the Arctic Basin. Photo: ©Tor Ivan Karlsen, Norwegian Polar Institute, 2010

Annual Updates

2026

The CliC ASIWG co-hosted a workshop, Sea Ice Day, at the CliC Open Science Conference on 8 February 2026. The forum was a joint effort between the Arctic Sea Ice Working Group (ASIWG), Sea-Ice Model Intercomparison Project (SIMIP), Antarctic Sea-Ice Processes & Climate (ASPeCt) and Biogeochemical Exchange Processes at Sea-Ice Interfaces (BEPSII) working groups, plus operational sea-ice services such as the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG).

More information is available here: https://clic2026.com/sea-ice-day/

2025

In 2025, ASIWG held an open meeting in Boulder, Colorado (USA) on 23 March as part of the Arctic Science Summit Week. Find the meeting agenda here.

Meeting Summary: This was the first open meeting since 2023 when the group met at the IGS Sea Ice Symposium in Bremerhaven. There were over 30 attendees, approximately 36% of which were Early Career Researchers (ECR). After an introduction, which included the presentation of new members of the working group, the morning sessions were dedicated to: (1) presentations and discussions on the lessons learned from the 4th International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007-2008 and future priorities and coordination opportunities for the sea ice community as planning begins for the 5th IPY in 2032-2033 (2) examples of joint sea ice modeling and observational activities and recommendations for better supporting joint activities in the future, and (3) novel applications of open science in the cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for sea ice science. The afternoon session was focused on upcoming products, observing program updates, and observational opportunities to facilitate coordination and collaboration across the international sea ice community.

At the end of the workshop, there was a fruitful discussion that centered on recommendations and suggestions for future ASIWG activity priorities. The workshop collectively identified the need for a planning tool to help the broader Arctic science community learn about and coordinate with various upcoming field activities. There was discussion of the need for identifying linkages between the Arctic and Antarctic environments with respect to scientific similarities and their roles in the global climate, as well as practicalities in the standardization of observing methods for the 5th IPY between the Arctic and the Antarctic. This led to strong support from the workshop attendees for an updated edition of the Field Techniques for Sea Ice Measurements book (first edition edited by Hajo Eicken and others, issued in 2009), to help support 5th IPY field observational activities, which the ASIWG has agreed to undertake. There were also strong recommendations to revisit the World Meteorological Organization’s sea ice nomenclature given the vast changes in the Arctic sea ice state and the need for more language translations, as well as Indigenous knowledge input. A suggestion for supporting hackweeks to support specific science and data challenges was put forward as one of the activities that the ASIWG could also support in the coming years.

Overall, it was a successful meeting that enabled knowledge sharing of ideas for integrating observations with remote sensing and modelling efforts, fostered new connections between international groups, and created a path forward for developing measurement protocols for sea ice measurements in support of observing activities in the 5th IPY.

2023

The CliC Arctic Sea Ice Working Group held a workshop as a side meeting to the IGS Sea Ice Symposium in June 2023.

The goals of the workshop were to discuss the following activities themes:
1) Develop, standardize, and implement observation and measurement protocols for Arctic sea ice in coastal, seasonal, and perennial ice zones
2) Integrate surface-based observations with remote sensing and modeling efforts
3) Establish and foster connections between international groups involved in sea ice observations, modeling, remote sensing, and data assimilation.

For further information about this meeting please see the full meeting report.

2018

The ASIWG will continue to integrate Arctic sea ice-related activities into MOSAiC and the Year of Polar Prediction. Coordinating autonomous buoy deployments is a particular focus. This coordination is critical since the Year of Polar Prediction happening now and the MOSAIC field campaign will start in fall 2019. We will work with MOSAiC to standardize snow and ice observational protocol. We will continue disseminating the ASSIST ice watch software to research vessels and cruise ships operating in the Arctic. We plan to work on implementing an essential sea ice variables sustained observing framework. These proposed activities will be done in collaboration with other CliC groups. An ASIWG workshop in 2018 is being planned, most likely to be held in conjunction with a MOSAiC planning meeting.

2017

ASSIST, the sea ice observation software, continues to be used on both research and tourist cruises. ASIWG members have continued to contribute to the Sea Ice Section of the NOAA Arctic Report Card and to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society State of the Climate issue. ASIWG members have participated in the planning of MOSAiC – Multidisciplinary drifting observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. ASIWG members participated in 2017 Sea Ice Prediction Network and in a joint modeling/observing workshop examining sea ice thickness.

2017 Publications:
Richter‐Menge and others. The Arctic (in “State of the Climate in 2016”). Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 98, 2017.