NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The overarching goal of ARCSIX is to quantify the contributions of surface properties, clouds, aerosol particles, and precipitation to the Arctic summer surface radiation budget and sea ice melt during the early melt season (May through mid-July). It encompasses three main science questions and one objective:

Science Question 1 (Radiation): What is the impact of the predominant summer Arctic cloud types on the radiative surface energy budget?
Science Question 2 (Cloud Life Cycle): What processes control the evolution and maintenance of the predominant cloud regimes in the summertime Arctic?
Science Question 3 (Sea Ice): How do the two-way interactions between surface properties and atmospheric forcings affect the sea ice evolution?
Remote Sensing and Modeling Objective: Enhance our long-term space-based monitoring and predictive capabilities of Arctic sea ice, cloud, and aerosols by validating and improving remote sensing algorithms and model parameterizations in the Arctic.