Experimental evidence for a universal threshold characterizing wave-induced sea ice break-up
Waves can drastically transform a sea ice cover by inducing break-up over vast distances in the course of a few hours. However, relatively few detailed studies have described this phenomenon in a quantitative manner, and the process of sea ice break-up by waves needs to be further parameterized and...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | unknown |
Published: |
arXiv
2020
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2007.07476 https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07476 |
Summary: | Waves can drastically transform a sea ice cover by inducing break-up over vast distances in the course of a few hours. However, relatively few detailed studies have described this phenomenon in a quantitative manner, and the process of sea ice break-up by waves needs to be further parameterized and verified before it can be reliably included in forecasting models. In the present work, we discuss sea ice break-up parameterization and demonstrate the existence of an observational threshold separating breaking and non-breaking cases. This threshold is based on information from two recent field campaigns, supplemented with existing observations of sea ice break-up. The data used cover a wide range of scales, from laboratory-grown sea ice to polar field observations. Remarkably, we show that both field and laboratory observations tend to converge to a single quantitative threshold at which the wave-induced sea ice break-up takes place, which opens a promising avenue for robust parametrization in operational forecasting models. : 18 pages, 8 figures, 1 table |
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