As the climate warms and the transition from a perennial to a seasonal Arctic sea-ice cover becomes imminent, knowledge of melt ponding is central to understanding changes in the new Arctic. The Density Dimension Algorithm for Bifurcating Sea-Ice Reflectors (DDA-bifurcate-seaice), applied to NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation (ICESat-2) photon data, has the ability to provide measurements and monitoring of the onset of melt in the Arctic and on melt progression through its ability to detect multiple surfaces within the photon cloud. The DDA-bifurcate-seaice detects and characterizes melt ponds by retrieving two surface heights, pond surface and bottom, and measurements of depth and width of melt ponds at near sensor resolution. Ponds are generally missed in the standard ICESat-2 Sea Ice Height data product (ATL07) due to its lower resolution and inability to detect multiple surfaces.
