Attenuation of ocean surface waves in pancake and frazil sea ice along the coast of the Chukchi Sea

Abstract

Buoy observations are used to calculate spectral attenuation rates of surface waves in pancake and frazil sea ice near the coast of Alaska • Consistently higher attenuation is observed near the ice edge than further in the ice cover • Attenuation rates follow a powerlaw dependence on frequency and are applicable to parametrization schemes in wave forecast models

From apparent attenuation towards physics-based source terms – a perspective on spectral wave modeling in ice-covered seas

“…Stopa et al (2018a) found difficulties in fitting single exponential curves to their SAR-derived wave heights and opted for piecewise fitting instead, with two very different exponential curves close to the ice edge and deeper inside of the MIZ. Strong dependence of attenuation on distance from the ice edge was also found by Hosěkováet al (2020). Recently, Huang and Li (2023) fitted exponential curves to satellite-derived profiles of wave heights (consisting of more than 10 data points), but high scatter in their data makes it difficult to estimate whether other functional forms would provide a better fit.…”