Fragmented Sea Ice Research Articles

A wave-based model for the marginal ice zone including a floe breaking parameterization

[1] The marginal ice zone (MIZ) is the boundary between the open ocean and ice-covered seas, where sea ice is significantly affected by the onslaught of ocean waves. Waves are responsible for the breakup of ice floes and determine the extent of the MIZ and floe size distribution. When the ice cover is highly fragmented, its behavior is qualitatively different from that of pack ice with large floes. Therefore, it is important to incorporate wave-ice interactions into sea ice–ocean models. In order to achieve this goal, two effects are considered: the role of sea ice as a dampener of wave energy and the wave-induced breakup of ice floes. These two processes act in concert to modify the incident wave spectrum and determine the main properties of the MIZ. A simple but novel parameterization for floe breaking is derived by considering alternatively ice as a flexible and rigid material and by using current estimates of ice critical flexural strain and strength. This parameterization is combined with a wave scattering model in a one-dimensional numerical framework to evaluate the floe size distribution and the extent of the MIZ. The model predicts a sharp transition between fragmented sea ice and the central pack, thus providing a natural definition for the MIZ. Reasonable values are found for the extent of the MIZ given realistic initial and boundary conditions. The numerical setting is commensurate with typical ice-ocean models, with the future implementation into two-dimensional sea ice models in mind.

Variability of scaling time series in the Arctic sea-ice drift dynamics

Abstract. The motion of an individual ice floe in the Arctic Ocean was monitored at the Russian research station North Pole 35 established on the ice pack in 2008. The ice floe speed (V) was found to be correlated with wind speed (v) in main features, such as the positions of maxima and minima of V and v. However, the fine structure of the V-variation cannot be explained by the wind forcing alone. There were periods of time when the floe drift was affected by the interactions of ice floes between each other or by the periodical forcing due to either the Coriolis inertia effect or the tidal activity. These data were compared with the "waiting times" statistics that are the distributions of time intervals between subsequent, sufficiently strong changes in the kinetic energy of drifting ice floe. These distributions were measured in several time windows differing in the average wind speed and wind direction, and/or in the mechanical state of the ice pack. The distribution functions N (t>τ), where N is the number of successive events of energy change separated by the time interval t that exceeds τ, constructed in different time windows demonstrate fractal or a multifractal nature of the time series during motion in the consolidated ice pack but were truly random when the ice floe drifted in the highly fragmented sea ice. The latter result shows the existence of a relationship between the long-range mechanical interactions in the pack and long-term memory (time scaling behaviour) of the sea-ice motion.