Eddyâ€Induced Dispersion of Sea Ice Floes at the Marginal Ice Zone

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Gupta, Mukund, Gürcan, Emma, Thompson, Andrew F.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2024
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1029/2023gl105656

Ocean heat exchanges at the marginal ice zone (MIZ) play an important role in melting sea ice. Mixed-layer eddies transport heat and ice floes across the MIZ, facilitating the pack's access to warm waters. This study explores these frontal dynamics using disk-shaped floes coupled to an upper-ocean model simulating the sea ice edge. Numerical experiments reveal that small floes respond more strongly to fine-scale ocean currents, which favors higher dispersion rates and weakens sea ice drag onto the underlying ocean. Floes with radii smaller than resolved turbulent filaments (∼2–4 km) result in a wider and more energetic MIZ, by a factor of 70% each, compared to larger floes. We hypothesize that this floe size dependency may affect sea ice break-up by controlling oceanic energy propagation into the MIZ and modulate the sea ice pack's melt rate by regulating lateral heat transport toward the sea ice cover. © 2024. The Authors. This is an open access article underthe terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. M.G., E.G., and A.F.T. were supported by the Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) on Mathematics and Data Science for Physical Modeling and Prediction of Sea Ice. A.F.T. also acknowledges support from the NSF OCE 1829969 Grant. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments helped improve the manuscript. Conceptualization: Mukund Gupta, Andrew F. Thompson Formal analysis: Mukund Gupta, Emma Gürcan Funding acquisition: Andrew F. Thompson Investigation: Mukund Gupta, Andrew F. Thompson Methodology: Mukund Gupta Project Administration: Andrew F. Thompson Resources: Andrew F. Thompson Software: Mukund Gupta Supervision: Mukund Gupta, Andrew F. Thompson Validation: Mukund Gupta The sea ice floe code is provided in Gupta(2022), ...