Sea Ice Discrete Element Modeling: Melt and Fracture of Floes and Sheets ...

• Main Author: Moncada Lopez, Rigoberto
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: California Institute of Technology 2024
• Subjects: Sea Ice; melt; FSD.; Civil Engineering; FOS Civil engineering; breakage; Discrete Element Method; Landfast sea ice sheets; Computational geomechanics; Floes; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7907/erqr-cr51; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:07032023-235459528

Over the last 40 years, the Arctic Ocean has experienced a significant reduction in surface area and thickness of sea ice for its minimum summer and year-round values. Sea ice, existing both as continuous ice sheets and distinct broken floes or blocks, is disappearing earlier and faster over time. These changes are largely occurring within marginal ice zones, where ice is most vulnerable to thermal forcings from the sun, oceans, and atmosphere and wind and ocean currents. Given that sea ice plays a vital role in regulating climate by delaying global energy exchanges, its loss is a vital factor in increasing global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events. Understanding and projecting seasonal variations in sea ice is imperative to improve climate predictions. However, many of the processes in sea ice are not fully described by most existing models, due to the limitations of continuum sea ice approaches. As a result the use of discontinuum techniques on sea ice is a very active field. In this ...