Canadian Ice Service archive: overview

The Canadian Ice Service Archive manages a vast collection of historical ice data that is updated daily.

Why does the Canadian Ice Service maintain an ice archive?

It is done for many different reasons, namely:

Climate studies: historical ice data can serve a wide variety of scientific and commercial purposes, such as general research efforts, planning activities, ship design, and more
Legal purposes: our ice information can be useful, for example, in the case of investigations following shipping accidents, insurance purposes, etc.
Other uses: tourism, fishing, environmental impact studies, stock replenishing, as well as engineering studies for the construction of facilities (bridges, harbours, drilling platforms) in ice-covered waters.

The Canadian Ice Service Archive includes data in various forms:

Ice and iceberg charts in several types of media (paper, microfilm, and digital formats);
A large collection of aircraft and satellite imagery; and
Bulletins and other text documents.

Currently, only the collections listed below are accessible online.