Pressure ridge induced sea water infiltration in a porous first year sea ice bottom layer.
Abstract
Heat exchanges at the ice-ocean interface are key to ocean-ice-atmosphere models. At spring when the brine channel network re-opens and allows water to penetrate and exit the bottom ice layer, pressure gradients induced downstream of pressure ridges act as an heat pump that extract latent heat from the ice body. We present results of a prognostic simulation of the volume melt that occurs in the bottom part of the ice cover as a consequence of a forced sea water infiltration. Momentum, mass and heat equations are solved within the ice using a finite difference model. Non-linear equations within each cell are implemented to include volume melt in the thermodynamic equilibrium of the ice cover. The ice is modeled as a porous matrix which walls melt with time allowing to monitor the evolution of the ice porosity. Results present temperature salinity and porosity time series in the affected part of the ice. We also compute the heat balance fluxes involved in the process.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFMOS43B1239G
- Keywords:
-
- 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes (0700;
- 0750;
- 0752;
- 0754);
- 9310 Antarctica (4207)