Crack formation and breakout of shore fast sea ice in Mordvinova Bay, south-east Sakhalin Island

Experimental evidence for a universal threshold characterizing wave-induced sea ice break-up

“…The presence of relatively high wind speeds over the polynya region on 7 January 2020 is expected to have generated wind waves at the deployment site. 2019and Kovalev et al (2020). We note that the break-up observations made by Liu and Mollo-Christensen (1988) and Kohout et al (2016) are visual shipborne observations and not in situ measurements (see the complete set in Table 1).…”

“…The WAVEWATCH III Development Group, 2019). Our understanding of wave-induced sea ice break-up is, however, significantly lacking, and few studies are available (with the notable exception of the studies by Crocker and Wadhams, 1989;Langhorne et al, 1998;Kohout and Meylan, 2008;Dumont et al, 2011;Williams et al, 2013a).…”

“…In particular, exposure to the cyclic bending of the ice by waves not only can lower the flexural strength of the ice (e.g. Langhorne et al, 1998), commonly known as fatigue, but can also strengthen the ice when steady stress loads are applied to the ice (Murdza et al, 2020), such as by wind and currents, whereas local heterogeneities in sea ice can lead to localized concentration of stress. While these complexities are intrinsic to the physics of the wave-induced sea ice break-up problem, a full under-standing of these processes is outside the scope of this study.…”

Experimental evidence for a universal threshold characterizing wave-induced sea ice break-up

“…Besides the laboratory study of Herman et al 2018, field observations were taken from Liu and Mollo-Christensen 1988 2019and Kovalev et al (2020). We note that the break-up observations made by Liu and Mollo-Christensen (1988) and Kohout et al (2016) are visual shipborne observations and not in situ measurements (see the complete set in Table 1).…”

“…In the case of the field experiment of Kovalev et al (2020), wave conditions resulting in the largest I br were used here as these are the waves most likely responsible for the break-up event observed. For the field observations of Sutherland and Rabault (2016), cracks in the ice were argued to be responsible for the sudden change in the dispersion relation from flexuralgravity waves to gravity waves, and this transition is used here to determine the instant at which the ice was broken by waves.…”