Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution
We study the seasonal changes in the thickness distribution of Arctic sea ice, g(h), under climate forcing. Our analytical and numerical approach is based on a Fokker–Planck equation for g(h) (Toppaladoddi and Wettlaufer in Phys Rev Lett 115(14):148501, 2015), in which the thermodynamic growth rates...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7010393 2023-05-15T13:11:33+02:00 Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution Toppaladoddi, Srikanth Wettlaufer, J. S. 2017-01-04 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010393/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 en eng Springer US http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010393/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. CC-BY Article Text 2017 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 2020-03-01T01:20:38Z We study the seasonal changes in the thickness distribution of Arctic sea ice, g(h), under climate forcing. Our analytical and numerical approach is based on a Fokker–Planck equation for g(h) (Toppaladoddi and Wettlaufer in Phys Rev Lett 115(14):148501, 2015), in which the thermodynamic growth rates are determined using observed climatology. In particular, the Fokker–Planck equation is coupled to the observationally consistent thermodynamic model of Eisenman and Wettlaufer (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:28–32, 2009). We find that due to the combined effects of thermodynamics and mechanics, g(h) spreads during winter and contracts during summer. This behavior is in agreement with recent satellite observations from CryoSat-2 (Kwok and Cunningham in Philos Trans R Soc A 373(2045):20140157, 2015). Because g(h) is a probability density function, we quantify all of the key moments (e.g., mean thickness, fraction of thin/thick ice, mean albedo, relaxation time scales) as greenhouse-gas radiative forcing, [Formula: see text] , increases. The mean ice thickness decays exponentially with [Formula: see text] , but much slower than do solely thermodynamic models. This exhibits the crucial role that ice mechanics plays in maintaining the ice cover, by redistributing thin ice to thick ice-far more rapidly than can thermal growth alone. Text albedo Arctic Sea ice PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Journal of Statistical Physics 167 3-4 683 702 |
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Article Toppaladoddi, Srikanth Wettlaufer, J. S. Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
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Article |
description |
We study the seasonal changes in the thickness distribution of Arctic sea ice, g(h), under climate forcing. Our analytical and numerical approach is based on a Fokker–Planck equation for g(h) (Toppaladoddi and Wettlaufer in Phys Rev Lett 115(14):148501, 2015), in which the thermodynamic growth rates are determined using observed climatology. In particular, the Fokker–Planck equation is coupled to the observationally consistent thermodynamic model of Eisenman and Wettlaufer (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:28–32, 2009). We find that due to the combined effects of thermodynamics and mechanics, g(h) spreads during winter and contracts during summer. This behavior is in agreement with recent satellite observations from CryoSat-2 (Kwok and Cunningham in Philos Trans R Soc A 373(2045):20140157, 2015). Because g(h) is a probability density function, we quantify all of the key moments (e.g., mean thickness, fraction of thin/thick ice, mean albedo, relaxation time scales) as greenhouse-gas radiative forcing, [Formula: see text] , increases. The mean ice thickness decays exponentially with [Formula: see text] , but much slower than do solely thermodynamic models. This exhibits the crucial role that ice mechanics plays in maintaining the ice cover, by redistributing thin ice to thick ice-far more rapidly than can thermal growth alone. |
format |
Text |
author |
Toppaladoddi, Srikanth Wettlaufer, J. S. |
author_facet |
Toppaladoddi, Srikanth Wettlaufer, J. S. |
author_sort |
Toppaladoddi, Srikanth |
title |
Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
title_short |
Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
title_full |
Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
title_fullStr |
Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
title_full_unstemmed |
Statistical Mechanics and the Climatology of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution |
title_sort |
statistical mechanics and the climatology of the arctic sea ice thickness distribution |
publisher |
Springer US |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010393/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
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albedo Arctic Sea ice |
genre_facet |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010393/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-016-1704-8 |
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Journal of Statistical Physics |
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167 |
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3-4 |
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683 |
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702 |
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