Wave‐Induced Surge Motion and Collisions of Sea Ice Floes: Finite‐Floe‐Size Effects

2018 ◽  
Vol 123 (10) ◽  
pp. 7472-7494 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Herman
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Dumas-Lefebvre ◽  
Dany Dumont

Abstract. We provide the first in situ observations of floe size distributions (FSD) resulting from wave-induced sea ice break-up. In order to obtain such data, an unmanned aerial vehicle was deployed from the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen as it sailed in the vicinity of large ice floes in Baffin Bay and in the St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada. When represented as probability density functions weighted by the surface of ice floes, the FSDs exhibit a strong modal shape which confirms the preferential size hypothesis debated in the scientific community. Both FSDs are compared to a flexural rigidity length scale, which depends on ice properties, and with the wavelength scale. This comparison tends to show that the maximal distance between cracks is preferentially dictated by sea ice thickness and elasticity rather than by the wavelength. Temporal analysis of one fracture event is also done. Results show that the break-up advances almost as fast as the wave energy and that waves responsible for the break-up propagate following the mass loading dispersion relation. Moreover, our experiments show that thicker ice can attenuate wave less than thinner ice. This method thus provides key information on the wave-induced FSD, clarifies theoretical aspects from the construction of the FSD to its implementation in models and brings new knowledge regarding the temporal evolution of sea ice break-up.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Horvat ◽  
Lettie A. Roach

Abstract. Ocean surface waves play an important role in maintaining the marginal ice zone, a heterogenous region occupied by sea ice floes with variable horizontal sizes. The location, width, and evolution of the marginal ice zone is determined by the mutual interaction of ocean waves and floes, as waves propagate into the ice, bend it, and fracture it. In previous work, we developed a one-dimensional “superparameterized” scheme to simulate the interaction between the stochastic ocean surface wave field and sea ice. As this method is computationally expensive and not bitwise reproducible, here we use a pair of neural networks to accelerate this parameterization, delivering an adaptable, computationally-inexpensive, reproducible approach for simulating stochastic wave-ice interactions. Implemented in the sea ice model CICE, this accelerated code reproduces global statistics resulting from the full wave fracture code without increasing computational overheads. The combined model, Wave-Induced Floe Fracture (WIFF v1.0) is publicly available and may be incorporated into climate models that seek to represent the effect of waves fracturing sea ice.


2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (69) ◽  
pp. 415-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison L. Kohout ◽  
Bill Penrose ◽  
Scott Penrose ◽  
Michael J.M. Williams

AbstractA series of wave instruments was deployed on first-year Antarctic sea ice during SIPEX (Sea Ice Physics and Ecosystem Experiment) II. Here we describe the hardware and software design of these instruments and give an overview of the returned dataset. Each instrument consisted of a high-resolution accelerometer coupled with a tri-axis inertial measurement unit, which was located using GPS. The significant wave heights measured near the ice edge were predominately between 1 and 2 m. During the 6 weeks of data capture, several large wave events were measured. We report here a selection of events, highlighting the complexities associated with measuring wave decay at individual frequencies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Herman ◽  
Marta Wenta ◽  
Sukun Cheng

The floe size distribution (FSD) is an important characteristics of sea ice, influencing several physical processes that take place in the oceanic and atmospheric boundary layers under/over sea ice, as well as within sea ice itself. Through complex feedback loops involving those processes, FSD might modify the short-term and seasonal evolution of the sea ice cover, and therefore significant effort is undertaken by the scientific community to better understand FSD-related effects and to include them in sea ice models. An important part of that effort is analyzing the FSD properties and variability in different ice and forcing conditions, based on airborne and satellite imagery. In this work we analyze a very high resolution (pixel size: 0.3 m) satellite image of sea ice from a location off the East Antarctic coast (65.6°S, 101.9°E), acquired on February 16, 2019. Contrary to most previous studies, the ice floes in the image have angular, polygonal shapes and a narrow size distribution. We show that the observed FSD can be represented as a weighted sum of two probability distributions, a Gaussian and a tapered power law, with the Gaussian part clearly dominating in the size range of floes that contribute over 90% to the total sea ice surface area. Based on an analysis of the weather, wave and ice conditions in the period preceding the day in question, we discuss the most probable scenarios that led to the breakup of landfast ice into floes visible in the image. Finally, theoretical arguments backed up by a series of numerical simulations of wave propagation in sea ice performed with a scattering model based on the Matched Eigenfunction Expansion Method are used to show that the observed dominating floe size in the three different regions of the image (18, 13 and 51 m, respectively) agree with those expected as a result of wave-induced breaking of landfast ice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 103208
Author(s):  
Hongtao Li ◽  
Ersegun Deniz Gedikli ◽  
Raed Lubbad

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (18) ◽  
pp. 9721-9730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Horvat ◽  
Eli Tziperman
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (14) ◽  
pp. 8147-8163 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Schäfer ◽  
E. Bierwirth ◽  
A. Ehrlich ◽  
E. Jäkel ◽  
M. Wendisch

Abstract. Based on airborne spectral imaging observations, three-dimensional (3-D) radiative effects between Arctic boundary layer clouds and highly variable Arctic surfaces were identified and quantified. A method is presented to discriminate between sea ice and open water under cloudy conditions based on airborne nadir reflectivity γλ measurements in the visible spectral range. In cloudy cases the transition of γλ from open water to sea ice is not instantaneous but horizontally smoothed. In general, clouds reduce γλ above bright surfaces in the vicinity of open water, while γλ above open sea is enhanced. With the help of observations and 3-D radiative transfer simulations, this effect was quantified to range between 0 and 2200 m distance to the sea ice edge (for a dark-ocean albedo of αwater = 0.042 and a sea-ice albedo of αice = 0.91 at 645 nm wavelength). The affected distance Δ L was found to depend on both cloud and sea ice properties. For a low-level cloud at 0–200 m altitude, as observed during the Arctic field campaign VERtical Distribution of Ice in Arctic clouds (VERDI) in 2012, an increase in the cloud optical thickness τ from 1 to 10 leads to a decrease in Δ L from 600 to 250 m. An increase in the cloud base altitude or cloud geometrical thickness results in an increase in Δ L; for τ = 1/10 Δ L = 2200 m/1250 m in case of a cloud at 500–1000 m altitude. To quantify the effect for different shapes and sizes of ice floes, radiative transfer simulations were performed with various albedo fields (infinitely long straight ice edge, circular ice floes, squares, realistic ice floe field). The simulations show that Δ L increases with increasing radius of the ice floe and reaches maximum values for ice floes with radii larger than 6 km (500–1000 m cloud altitude), which matches the results found for an infinitely long, straight ice edge. Furthermore, the influence of these 3-D radiative effects on the retrieved cloud optical properties was investigated. The enhanced brightness of a dark pixel next to an ice edge results in uncertainties of up to 90 and 30 % in retrievals of τ and effective radius reff, respectively. With the help of Δ L, an estimate of the distance to the ice edge is given, where the retrieval uncertainties due to 3-D radiative effects are negligible.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.-S. Park ◽  
A. L. Stewart

Abstract. The authors present an analytical model for wind-driven free drift of sea ice that allows for an arbitrary mixture of ice and open water. The model includes an ice–ocean boundary layer with an Ekman spiral, forced by transfers of wind-input momentum both through the sea ice and directly into the open water between the ice floes. The analytical tractability of this model allows efficient calculation of the ice velocity provided that the surface wind field is known and that the ocean geostrophic velocity is relatively weak. The model predicts that variations in the ice thickness or concentration should substantially modify the rotation of the velocity between the 10 m winds, the sea ice, and the ocean. Compared to recent observational data from the first ice-tethered profiler with a velocity sensor (ITP-V), the model is able to capture the dependencies of the ice speed and the wind/ice/ocean turning angles on the wind speed. The model is used to derive responses to intensified southerlies on Arctic summer sea ice concentration, and the results are shown to compare closely with satellite observations.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Herman

Abstract. In this paper, a coupled sea ice–wave model is developed and used to analyze the variability of wave-induced stress and breaking in sea ice. The sea ice module is a discrete-element bonded-particle model, in which ice is represented as cuboid "grains" floating on the water surface that can be connected to their neighbors by elastic "joints". The joints may break if instantaneous stresses acting on them exceed their strength. The wave part is based on an open-source version of the Non-Hydrostatic WAVE model (NHWAVE). The two parts are coupled with proper boundary conditions for pressure and velocity, exchanged at every time step. In the present version, the model operates in two dimensions (one vertical and one horizontal) and is suitable for simulating compact ice in which heave and pitch motion dominates over surge. In a series of simulations with varying sea ice properties and incoming wavelength it is shown that wave-induced stress reaches maximum values at a certain distance from the ice edge. The value of maximum stress depends on both ice properties and characteristics of incoming waves, but, crucially for ice breaking, the location at which the maximum occurs does not change with the incoming wavelength. Consequently, both regular and random (Jonswap spectrum) waves break the ice into floes with almost identical sizes. The width of the zone of broken ice depends on ice strength and wave attenuation rates in the ice.


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