Trajectories of MIZ buoy clusters and characteristic floe size distribution. (a) GPS trajectories of the reference buoys for MIZ buoy clusters between May 1 and September 30, 2014. Trajectories are shown in solid lines for a selected reference buoy that was initially located at the centre of the buoy cluster. Empty square symbols mark the location of TS-X images used for the retrieval of open water fraction, and filled square symbols mark the location of TS-X images analyzed for floe size distribution (FSD) in this study. Star symbols mark the location of the buoys on March 20, 2014. The reference buoy for each cluster is IMB13 (Cluster 1), ITP-V 77 (Cluster 2), ITP-V 78 (Cluster 3), and ITP-V 79 (Cluster 4). Plots in panels (b)–(d) show FSD results in a log-log plot of cumulative floe number density for selected dates. Panel (b) provides a typical example of FSD results in July in which the goodness-of-the-fit test passed (p-value ≥ 0.1); (c) and (d) show the cases in which the goodness-of-fit test failed (p-value < 0.1). In plots in panels (b)–(d), α x_min, and p-value were calculated following Virkar and Clauset (2014). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.232.f1