Estimating the elastic modulus of landfast ice from wave observations

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Joey J. Voermans, Jean Rabault, Aleksey Marchenko, Takehiko Nose, Takuji Waseda, Alexander V. Babanin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Glaciological instruments and methods; ice/ocean interactions; sea ice; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Journal of Glaciology; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2023.63; https://doaj.org/article/35ed1d82b8324567bbfef5bd62b9f1c6

Progress in our understanding of wave–ice interactions is currently hindered by the lack of in situ observations and information of sea-ice properties, including the elastic modulus. Here, we estimate the effective elastic modulus of sea ice using observations of waves in ice through the deployment of three open-source geophone recorders on landfast sea ice. From observations of low-frequency dispersive waves, we obtain an estimate of the effective elastic modulus in the range of 0.4–0.7 GPa. This is lower than the purely elastic modulus of the ice estimated at 1 GPa as derived from in situ beam experiments. Importantly, our experimental observation is significantly lower than the default value currently in use in wave models. While our estimate is not representative for all sea ice, it does indicate that considerably more measurements are required to provide confidence in the development of parameterizations for this complex sea-ice property for wave models.