Abstract:
Ships and submarines have historically used leads, or sea ice
fractures, to navigate Arctic waters. Scientists study leads to better
understand their roles in arctic climatology and global climate
change. Leads, particularly those exposing warm ocean water to cold
arctic air, influence the energy balance at polar latitudes by
contributing
... to the atmospheric heat flux. Because the poles act as
heat sinks in the global energy balance, lead formation, evolution and
distribution in the polar regions is important. The objective of the
Arctic Leads ARI was to gain a better understanding of lead
dynamics. As part of the project, the Arctic Leads ARI Data Set was
created to encourage the assembly of an arctic leads climatology. This
case study presents data from 1 March 1992 to 30 April 1992 and covers
a region from 65N to 80N latitude and from 180W to 120W longitude.
The data for this experiment is under Working Group 5 (Polar Clouds)
of the GEWEX Cloud System Study (GCSS) is to improve the
parameterization of precipitating convective cloud systems in global
climate models (GCMs) and numerical weather prediction models through
an improved physical understanding of cloud system processes. 
