Wave–sea-ice interactions in a brittle rheological framework

Boutin, Guillaume; Williams, T.; Rampal, Pierre; Ólason, Einar; Lique, Camille

doi:10.5194/tc-2020-19

Cited by 10 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Answering this question requires the development of a coupled wave–ice-ocean modelling framework that is informed and validated with relevant and dedicated field studies, as well as the implementation of systematic observational products of MIZ dynamics. Efforts in this direction are well underway with the recent development of coupled wave–ice models [76] and remote sensing products of waves-in-ice [37,38] and floe size [77]. This review further highlights a number of specific questions and research avenues that are summarized below: A generalized rheological model should be applicable to any type of sea ice in both hemispheres.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marginal ice zone dynamics: history, definitions and research perspectives

Dumont

2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Despite enormous scientific and technological progress in numerical weather and climate prediction, sea ice still remains unreliably predicted by models, both in short-term forecasting and climate projection applications. The total ice extent in both hemispheres is tied to the location of the ice edge, and consequently to what happens in the portion of the ice cover immediately adjacent to the open ocean that is called the marginal ice zone (MIZ). There is mounting evidence that processes occurring in the MIZ might play an important role in the polar climate of both hemispheres, yet some key physical processes are still missing in models. As sea ice models developed for climate studies are increasingly used for operational forecasting, the missing physics also impede short-term sea ice prediction skills. This paper is a mini-review that provides a historical perspective on how MIZ research has progressed since the 1970s, with a focus on the fundamental importance of the interactions between sea ice and surface gravity waves on sea ice dynamics. Completeness is not achieved, as the body of literature is huge, scattered and rapidly growing, but the intention is to inform future collaborative research efforts to improve our understanding and predictive capabilities of sea ice dynamics in the MIZ. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Theory, modelling and observations of marginal ice zone dynamics: multidisciplinary perspectives and outlooks’.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marginal ice zone dynamics: history, definitions and research perspectives

Dumont

2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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“…This concept of damage has clear parallels with the mechanism discussed above of how winter in-plane brittle fracture events can determine how the sea ice breaks up in summer and may therefore present a useful basis for the development of a full parameterisation of brittle fracture processes for use in FSD models. Boutin et al (2021) also demonstrated that the Maxwell-EB rheology can be combined with an FSD model in order to explore how wave break-up of floes can impact sea ice dynamics, highlighting an application of floe size modelling not considered in this study.…”

Section: Inclusion Of Brittle Fracture In Fsd Modelsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Sea ice floe size: its impact on pan-Arctic and local ice mass and required model complexity

et al. 2022

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Abstract. Sea ice is composed of discrete units called floes. Observations show that these floes can adopt a range of sizes spanning orders of magnitude, from metres to tens of kilometres. Floe size impacts the nature and magnitude of interactions between the sea ice, ocean, and atmosphere including lateral melt rate and momentum and heat exchange. However, large-scale geophysical sea ice models employ a continuum approach and traditionally either assume floes adopt a constant size or do not include an explicit treatment of floe size. In this study we apply novel observations to analyse two alternative approaches to modelling a floe size distribution (FSD) within the state-of-the-art CICE sea ice model. The first model considered is a prognostic floe size–thickness distribution where the shape of the distribution is an emergent feature of the model and is not assumed a priori. The second model considered, the WIPoFSD (Waves-in-Ice module and Power law Floe Size Distribution) model, assumes floe size follows a power law with a constant exponent. We introduce a parameterisation motivated by idealised models of in-plane brittle fracture to the prognostic model and demonstrate that the inclusion of this scheme enables the prognostic model to achieve a reasonable match against the novel observations for mid-sized floes (100 m–2 km). While neither FSD model results in a significant improvement in the ability of CICE to simulate pan-Arctic metrics in a stand-alone sea ice configuration, larger impacts can be seen over regional scales in sea ice concentration and thickness. We find that the prognostic model particularly enhances sea ice melt in the early melt season, whereas for the WIPoFSD model this melt increase occurs primarily during the late melt season. We then show that these differences between the two FSD models can be explained by considering the effective floe size, a metric used to characterise a given FSD. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages to these different approaches to modelling the FSD. We note that although the WIPoFSD model is unable to represent potentially important features of annual FSD evolution seen with the prognostic model, it is less computationally expensive and produces a better fit to novel FSD observations derived from 2 m resolution MEDEA imagery, possibly making this a stronger candidate for inclusion in climate models.

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“…Their breakup parametrization was inspired by that of [12] and assumed an underlying Pareto distribution. Building further on their WW3 module, Boutin et al coupled it with the sea ice models LIM3 [52] and neXtSIM [54]. Even though the FSDs are evolved by the ice models, the wave-induced breakup is handled by WW3, which, for coherence, leads to convergence towards Pareto distributions.…”

Section: Theory Of Wave-induced Sea Ice Breakupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical framework for the emergent floe size distribution in the marginal ice zone: the case for log-normality

Montiel

Mokus

2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Sea ice is not horizontally homogeneous on large scales. Its morphology is inherently discrete and made of individual floes. In recent years, sea ice models have incorporated this horizontal heterogeneity. The modelling framework considers an evolution equation for the probability density function of the floe size distribution (FSD) with forcing terms that represent the effects of several physical processes. Despite the modelling effort, a key question remains: What is the FSD emerging from the collection of all forcing processes? Field observations have long suggested that the FSD follows a power law, but this result has not been reproduced by models or laboratory experiments. The theoretical framework for FSD dynamics in response to physical forcings is presented. Wave-induced breakup is further examined with an emphasis on how it affects the FSD. Recent modelling results suggesting the consistent emergence of a log-normal distribution as a result of that process are further discussed. Log-normality is also found in a dataset of floe sizes, which was originally analysed under the power law hypothesis. A simple stochastic process of FSD dynamics, based on random fragmentation theory, is further shown to predict log-normality. We therefore conjecture that, in some situations, the emergent FSD follows a log-normal distribution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Theory, modelling and observations of marginal ice zone dynamics: multidisciplinary perspectives and outlooks’.

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Wave–sea-ice interactions in a brittle rheological framework

Cited by 10 publications

References 59 publications

Marginal ice zone dynamics: history, definitions and research perspectives

Marginal ice zone dynamics: history, definitions and research perspectives

Sea ice floe size: its impact on pan-Arctic and local ice mass and required model complexity

Theoretical framework for the emergent floe size distribution in the marginal ice zone: the case for log-normality

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