The Canadian Ice Service Archive (CISA)

The Canadian Ice Service Archive (CISA) manages a vast collection of historical ice data that is updated daily and Environment Canada/CIS staff often draw upon this data to meet the specific needs of their ice clients.

Why does the CIS 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 CIS 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:

• Daily ice analysis charts (since 1999)
• Regional ice analysis charts
• Weekly ice thickness and on-ice snow depth measurements for Canadian stations

*Note that the Regional Ice Analysis Charts are available in both .E00 and .Gif formats.