Impact of Ridge Induced Latent Heat Advection on Sea Ice Global Heat Budget.
Abstract
The effects of permeability on ice keel induced latent heat fluxes are examined using pressure ridge density statistics computed from SAR images and a prognostic simulation of forced brine advection through the bottom ice layer. Under pressure gradients generated in the wake of an ice keel sea water is pushed into and brine pumped out of the bottom ice layer. This in turn causes a new thermodynamic equilibrium to be reached. At spring when the ice permeability increases, brine export combined with sea water import translates into an advective heat flow that is balanced by the latent heat absorbed by volume melting of brine channel walls. Sea ice within the sheltered areas behind keels is modelled as an anisotropic heteregeneous mushy layer. The non-linear equation system within each cell is implemented on a finite volume grid and include volume melt of the brine channels from which porosity, water density, temperature and salinity are computed. Outputs from these simulations are then combined with ridge distribution statistics to evaluate the global impact of latent heat absorbed due to volume melting in the wake of ridges. As anticipated, results are highly dependent on permeability, nevertheless, they show that pressure ridge induced melting within the ice is a significant component of the heat budget when compared with melting at the ice water interface. This work underlines needs for further researches to improve our understanding of ice permeability changes during the melt season, it also calls for better tools to extract pressure ridge characteristics from satellite images.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFMOS11A1095H
- Keywords:
-
- 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes (0700;
- 0750;
- 0752;
- 0754)