IAOOS winter SIMBA data during N-ICE 2015 North of Svalbard

Two ice mass balance instruments (part of IAOOS7 and IAOOS8 platforms) deployed near 83°N on the same ice floe, documented the evolution of snow and ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean north of Svalbard in Jan-Mar 2015. Frequent profiles of temperature (every 3 hours) and temperature change after 30s and 120s heating (once a day) were recorded. The ratio of the temperature changes after heating provides a proxy for thermal diffusivity. Both instruments documented flooding and snow-ice formation. Flooding was clearly detectable in the simultaneous changes in thermal diffusivity proxy, increased temperature, and heat propagation through the underlying ice. Slush then progressively transformed into snow-ice. Flooding resulted from two different processes; i) after storm-induced break-up of snow-loaded floes for IAOOS8 and ii) after loss of buoyancy due to basal ice melt for IAOOS7. The instrument on IAOOS7 documented basal sea-ice melt over warm Atlantic waters and ocean-to-ice heat flux peaked at up to 400 Wm-2 in winter. Important Note: This submission has been initially submitted to SEA scieNtific Open data Edition (SEANOE) publication service and received the recorded DOI. The metadata elements have been further processed (refined) in EMODnet Ingestion Service in order to conform with the Data Submission Service specifications.