The Influence of Ocean Flow on Newly-Forming Sea Ice

The heat and mass balance of the Arctic Ocean is very sensitive to the growth and decay of sea ice and the interaction between the heat and salt fields in the oceanic boundary layer. We describe a novel mechanism for the generation of corrugations of the sea-ice--ocean interface and present the results of a mathematical analysis elucidating the mechanism. The mechanism relies on brine flows developing in the sea ice due to Bernoulli suction by flow of ocean past the interface. For ocean shears at the ice interface of typically 0.2s^-1, we expect the corrugations to form with a wavelength dependent upon the permeability structure of the sea ice. We expect the mechanism to be particularly important to sea ice grown in wind-maintained coastal polynyas and in leads.