Phytoplankton blooms over Arctic Ocean continental shelves are thought to be restricted to waters free of sea ice. Here, we document a massive phytoplankton bloom beneath fully consolidated pack ice far from the ice edge in the Chukchi Sea, where light transmission has increased in recent decades because of thinning ice cover and proliferation of melt ponds. The bloom was characterized by high diatom biomass and rates of growth and primary production. Evidence suggests that under-ice phytoplankton blooms may be more widespread over nutrient-rich Arctic continental shelves and that satellite-based estimates of annual primary production in these waters may be underestimated by up to 10-fold.

[1] A series of observations were made on melting first year, landfast Arctic sea ice near Barrow, Alaska to explore the seasonal evolution of melt pond coverage. Observations of pond coverage, albedo, and ice properties are combined with terrestrial lidar measurements of surface topography and meltwater balance to quantitatively identify the timing and role of mechanisms driving pond coverage. The formation of interposed fresh ice is found to eliminate meltwater percolation through early pond formation and allow widespread ponding well above sea level. Pond drainage to sea level occurs principally by horizontal meltwater transport over the ice surface to macroscopic flaws. Freeboard loss, caused by buoyancy decline as the ice thins, controls pond growth late in the melt season after percolation begins. The majority of the macroscopic flaws that drain melt ponds to sea level are observed to develop from brine drainage channels within the ice. A simple thermodynamic model of meltwater percolation illustrates that fresh meltwater inflow causes pores in the ice to either shrink and freeze shut or enlarge based on initial size and ice temperature. This threshold behavior of pore diameter controls both the blockage of smaller pores with interposed ice and the enlargement of larger brine drainage channels to allow meltwater drainage. The results identify links between the temporal evolution of pond coverage and ice temperature, salinity, and thickness, providing new opportunities to realistically parameterize ponds and summer ice albedo within sea ice models.Citation: Polashenski, C., D. Perovich, and Z. Courville (2012), The mechanisms of sea ice melt pond formation and evolution,

Abstract. Airborne particles of mineral dust play a key role in Earth's climate system and affect human activities around the globe. The numerical weather modeling community has undertaken considerable efforts to accurately forecast these dust emissions. Here, for the first time in the literature, we thoroughly describe and document the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) dust emission scheme for the Georgia Institute of Technology–Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) aerosol model within the Weather Research and Forecasting model with chemistry (WRF-Chem) and compare it to the other dust emission schemes available in WRF-Chem. The AFWA dust emission scheme addresses some shortcomings experienced by the earlier GOCART-WRF scheme. Improved model physics are designed to better handle emission of fine dust particles by representing saltation bombardment. WRF-Chem model performance with the AFWA scheme is evaluated against observations of dust emission in southwest Asia and compared to emissions predicted by the other schemes built into the WRF-Chem GOCART model. Results highlight the relative strengths of the available schemes, indicate the reasons for disagreement, and demonstrate the need for improved soil source data.