Scaling properties of sea ice deformation during winter and summer
Abstract
We investigate sea ice deformation observed with ice drifting buoy arrays during two field campaigns. Ice Station POLarstern [ISPOL], deployed in the western Weddell Sea during November 2004 to January 2005, included a study of small-scale (sub-synoptic) variability in sea ice velocity and deformation using an array of 24 buoys. Upon deployment the ISPOL buoy array measured 70 km in both zonal and meridional extent, and consisted of sub-arrays that resolved sea ice deformation on scales from 10 to 70 km. The Sea Ice Experiment: Dynamic Nature of the Arctic (SEDNA) used two nested arrays of six buoys each as a backbone for the experiment, that were deployed in late March 2007. The two arrays were circular with diameter 140 km and 20 km. ISPOL and SEDNA provide insight into the scaling properties of sea ice deformation over scales of 10 to 200 km during early Astral summer and late Boreal winter. The ISPOL and SEDNA arrays were split into sets of sub-arrays with varying length scales. We find that variance of divergence decreases as the length scale increases. The mean divergence for each length scale set follows a log-linear scaling relationship with length scale. This is an independent verification of a previous result of Marsden, Stern, Lindsay and Weiss (2004). This scaling is indicative of a fractal process. Deformation occurs at linear features (cracks, leads and ridges) in the ice pack, that are distributed with scales that range from meter to hundreds of kilometers in length. The magnitude of deformation at these linear features varies by two orders of magnitude across scales. We demonstrate that the deformation at all these scales is important in the mass balance of sea ice. Which has important implications for the design of sea ice deformation monitoring systems.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFM.C41C0459H
- Keywords:
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- 0750 CRYOSPHERE / Sea ice;
- 0754 CRYOSPHERE / Leads;
- 0774 CRYOSPHERE / Dynamics