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.

What Kind of Information does the Canadian Ice Service keep?

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.

Online access to the archive

Currently, only the collections listed below are accessible online.

  • Ice Charts [Details on charts and formats]
    • Daily Ice Charts (available in Graphics Interchange Format)
      • Black and White
      • World Meteorological Organization - Colour
    • Weekly Regional Ice Charts (available in Graphics Interchange Format, Shapefile and E00)
      • Black and White
      • World Meteorological Organization - Colour
    • Daily Iceberg Charts (available in Graphics Interchange Format)
  • Ice thickness Data

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