Atmospheric and Sea Ice Conditions During the Sheba Year: Historical and Spatial Assessment

The Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) field project from 1997 to 1998 collected a suite of atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean data in order to improve our understanding of the surface energy and ice mass balances. Given the importance of the SHEBA field data, an assessment of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the SHEBA year is needed. Were atmospheric and sea ice conditions during SHEBA similar to climatology? Were data collected at or near the SHEBA field site representative of a larger spatial domain? The objectives of this paper are to examine the SHEBA year in regard to its historical and spatial context. Results show that atmospheric and sea ice conditions near the SHEBA field site were representative of a large spatial area, but not particularly representative of climatological values with the exception of sea level pressure.