In the Arctic, sea ice shapes ecosystems and human activities. The Arctic has been undergoing rapid changes in recent decades, with sea ice decreasing in extent and thickness at an accelerating rate (Nghiem et al. 2007; Kwok & Cunningham 2008), transforming from thick, multi-year ice to thin, first-year ice (Maslanik et al. 2011). The Arctic sea-ice loss has contributed to the observed Arctic warming amplification and to the cooling trends over Eurasia (Ogawa et al. 2018). Snow on sea ice regulates our planet's energy balance, reflecting 85% of incoming solar radiation back into space (Webster et al. 2018). The change in overlying snow cover affects the energy exchange between the atmosphere, snow, ice and ocean (Brucker & Markus 2013), which has a significant impact on sea-ice thickness and volume (Perovich et al. 2007; Mäkynen & Similä 2015). The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out that the study of snow depth on Arctic sea ice has become an urgent issue (Stocker et al. 2013). The growth and melting of sea Abstract Changes in snow cover on the surface of Arctic sea ice affect the energy balance between the atmosphere and the ocean and play a vital role in the global climate system. Accurate snow depth is a precondition for representing thermodynamic processes in sea-ice systems and is helpful for estimating sea-ice thickness. To better apply Arctic snow-depth products released by different organizations, we compared four kinds of snow-depth products based on three kinds of passive microwave (PM) sensors and evaluated them against the snow depth measured by ice mass-balance buoys (IMB snow depth) and Operation Ice Bridge airborne snow radar (OIB snow depth). The results show that the snow depths from the product released by the University of Bremen (UB) are larger than those by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with an average difference of 10 cm. Comparing the PM remote-sensing snow depths released by UB, NSIDC and NASA against IMB and OIB snow depths, it is found that NSIDC AMSR-E snow-depth product has the highest accuracy. Although these PM remote-sensing snow-depth products released by different organizations differ in accuracy, they all reflect the spatio-temporal variation characteristics of snow depth on Arctic sea ice. These comparisons and analysis of snow-depth products from different sensors released by different organizations provide a basis for further investigation of Arctic sea-ice thickness estimation and benefit the studies of Arctic sea ice and climate change.
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