Abstract
AbstractUnderstanding how upper‐ocean heat content evolves and affects sea ice in the polar regions is necessary to predict past, present, and future weather and climate. Sea ice, a composite of individual floes, varies significantly on scales as small as meters. Lateral gradients in surface forcing across sea‐ice concentration gradients can energize subgrid‐scale ocean eddies that mix heat in the surface layer and control sea‐ice melting. Here the development of baroclinic instability near floe edges is investigated using a high‐resolution ocean circulation model, an idealization of a single grid cell of a climate model partially covered in thin, nearly static sea ice. From the resulting ocean circulation we characterize the strength of eddy‐induced lateral mixing and heat transport, and the effects on sea‐ice melting, as a function of state variables resolved in global climate models.
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