Differential Sea-Ice Drift. I. Spatial and Temporal Variations in Sea-Ice Deformation

Abstract

Measurements of mesoscale sea-ice deformation over a region approximately 20 km in diameter were carried out over a five-week period in the spring of 1972 at the main AIDJEX camp in the Beaufort Sea. They have been analyzed to determine non-linearities in the ice velocity field (due to the discrete small-scale nature of the ice pack), as well as a continuum mode of deformation represented by a least-squares strain-rate tensor and vorticity. The deformation-rate time series between Julian day 88 and 112 exhibited net areal changes as large as 3% and deformation rates up to 0.16% per hour. In the principal axis co-ordinate system, the strain-rate typically exhibited a much larger compression (or extension) along one axis than along the other. Persistent cycles at ≈ 12 h wavelengths were observed in the divergence rate.A comparison of the average residual error with the average strain-rate magnitude indicated that strains measured on a scale of 10 km or greater can serve as a valid measure of the continuum motion of the sea ice. This conclusion is also substantiated by a comparison between the mesoscale deformation, and macroscale deformation measured over a ≈ 100 km diameter region.Regarding pack-ice rotation, vorticity calculations indicate that at low temporal frequencies (0.02 h−1), the whole mesoscale array rotates essentially as an entity and consequently the low-frequency vorticity can be estimated accurately from the rotation of a single floe.