This document provides a general description of the SHEBA snow and ice program, as well as data and metadata. This work was done cooperatively by researchers at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (Don Perovich, Jackie Richter-Menge, Matthew Sturm, Terry Tucker, Bruce Elder, Bill Bosworth, John Govoni, Kerry Claffey, and Roy Belyea), the University of Washington ( Tom Grenfell, Gary Maykut, and Bonnie Light), the University of Alaska (Hajo Eicken) and the Japanese Frontier Program (Jinro Ukita). 

The overall objective of the SHEBA snow and ice program is to develop a quantitative understanding of the processes that collectively make up the ice-albedo feedback mechanism. To achieve this objective, we must first determine how shortwave radiation is distributed within the ice-ocean system, then assess the effects of this distribution on the regional heat and mass balance of the ice pack. Complicating the problem are a variety of issues related to the extreme sub-grid scale variability of the ice pack and how it can be accounted for in large-scale climate models and GCMs. There are 3 broad considerations that motivated our study:

· How is shortwave radiation partitioned between reflection, surface melting, internal heat storage, and transmission to the ocean, and how is this partitioning affected by the physical properties of the ice, snow cover, melt ponds and the distribution of particulates?

· What is the areal distribution of ice, ponds, and leads, how does this distribution vary with time, and how does it affect area-averaged heat and mass fluxes?

· What are the crucial variables needed to characterize ice-albedo feedback processes and their effect on the heat and mass balance of the ice pack, and how accurately can they be treated through simplified models and parameterizations?

The many distinct facets of the snow and ice program can be group into five general categories:

    Optics: measurements of albedo, transmittance, and incident ultraviolet irradiance.

    Mass balance: 9 sites with thermistor strings, 120 thickness gauge/ablation stake , plus pond and ridge evolution.

    Snow: spatial evolution and spatial variability of snow depth along 4 lines.

    Aerial observations: aerial photographs plus surface temperature measurements from 12 helicopter survey flights.

    Logs: bridge logs, ice team logs, and fun stuff from SHEBA  

In addition to these broad categories we also made observations of ice physical properties and ice internal stress. Snow and ice measurements were made throughout the entire SHEBA year. Depending on the time of year the ice program had as few as one person and as many as five at Ice Station SHEBA. Most of our measurements were made within a few kilometers of the ship. Our experimental layout is show in an annotated map.