Project “Monitoring Arctic Polynyas from Space (MAPS)”, funded by the Swedish National Space Agency, grant 2022-00149.
Ca 5.3 million SEK. I am the PI. Co-I is Luisa Ickes, Chalmers.
January 2023 – December 2026

The aim of the project is to determine the variability and improve the retrievability of polynyas in the Arctic. The three sub objectives are:

• To determine why the polynyas open where and when they do in the Arctic, both in winter and in summer, both for coastal and open-ocean / hybrid ones;
• To determine why they change shape while they are open, in particular the respective roles of dynamics and thermodynamics, and how predictible this is;
• To model the air-sea fluxes and more generally the impact of the polynyas on the weather, in order to (eventually) improve the polynya retrievability.

Team:

• PhD student Carmen Hau-Man Wong, since September 2023;
• Myself as main supervisor, and for the first two objectives;
• Luisa Ickes from Chalmers as co-supervisor, and for the third objective;
• Lu Zhou, former postdoc in this group, as co-supervisor.
• Collaboration with Kay Ohshima, Hokkaido University, Japan.

Publications:

• C. Heuzé and C.H.M. Wong (2025) Automatic detection of Arctic polynyas using hybrid supervised and unsupervised deep learning, The Cryosphere / EGUsphere, doi:10.5194/egusphere-2025-2747
• C.H.M. Wong, C. Heuzé, L. Ickes, and L. Zhou (2025) The spatio-temporal variability, trends, and drivers of winter Arctic polynyas, Journal of Climate, doi: 10.31223/X5VJ0P
• C. Heuzé and A. Jahn (2024) The first ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur before 2030, Nature Communications, vol 15, pp 10101, doi:10.1038/s41467-024-54508-3

Conference, seminar, or outreach presentations related to this project:

• 2 Oct 2025, Geoseminar, GU (Sweden)
  Céline Heuzé, talk: When the sea ice opens (polynyas)
• 16-17 Sept 2025, MPI 50-year anniversary CELLO symposium, Hamburg (Germany)
  Céline Heuzé, keynote talk: When the sea ice opens
• 23-27 June 2025, Living Planet Symposium, Vienna (Austria)
  Carmen Hau Man Wong, poster: Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Winter Arctic Polynyas (1978-2023)
• 18 May – 7 June 2025, KITP The Physics of the Changing Polar Climate, UCSB (US)
  Céline Heuzé, invited talk: From the Arctic’s Beaufort Gyre to Antarctic Bottom Water
• 12-16 May 2025, AMS Denver Summit, Denver (US) –
  Carmen Hau Man Wong, talk: Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Winter Arctic Polynyas (1978-2023)
• 26-27 March 2025, Svenska Rymdforskares Samarbetsgrupp meeting, Kiruna (Sweden)
  Céline Heuzé, invited talk: Monitoring Arctic (and Antarctic) sea ice from space
• 15-17 May 2024, Swedish Climate Symposium, Norrköping (Sweden)
  Carmen Hau Man Wong, poster: Spatial and temporal distribution of all Arctic Polynyas since 1979
• 15-19 April 2024, EGU24, Vienna (Austria)
  Carmen Hau Man Wong, poster: Spatial and temporal distribution of all Arctic Polynyas since 1979