This data set contains sea ice and snow measurements collected during aircraft landings associated with the Soviet Union's historical Sever airborne and North Pole drifting station programs. The High-Latitude Airborne Annual Expeditions Sever (Sever means North) took place in 1937, 1941, 1948-1952, and 1954-1993 (Konstantinov and Grachev, 2000). In Spring 1993, the last (45th) Sever expedition finished long-term activity in the Arctic. Snow and sea ice data were collected, along with meteorological and hydrological measurements (the latter are not part of this data set). Up to 202 landings were accomplished each year.
The data set contains measurements of 23 parameters, including ice thickness and snow depth on the runway and surrounding area; ridge, hummock, and sastrugi dimensions and areal coverage; and snow density. The sea ice thickness data are of particular importance, as ice thickness measurements for the Arctic Basin are scarce. These data are a subset of those used to create the atlas Morphometric Characteristics of Ice and Snow in the Arctic Basin, self-published by Ilya P. Romanov in 1993, and republished by Backbone Publishing Company in 1995. Romanov provided these data to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in 1994.