Sea ice is a heterogeneous, evolving mosaic comprised of many individual floes, which vary in spatial scales from meters to tens of kilometers. Both the internal dynamics of the floe mosaic (floe-floe interactions), and the evolution of floes under ocean and atmospheric forcing (floe-flow interactions), determine the exchange of heat, momentum, and tracers between the lower atmosphere and upper polar oceans. Climate models do not represent either of these highly variable interactions. We use a novel, high-resolution, discrete element modelling framework to examine the production of ice-ocean boundary layer (IOBL) turbulence within a domain approximately the size of a climate model grid. We show floe-scale effects cause a marked increase in IOBL turbulent production relative to continuum model approaches, and provide a method of representing that turbulence using bulk parameters related to the spatial variance of the ice and ocean: the floe size distribution and the ocean kinetic energy spectrum.

Wave-ice interactions are critical for correctly modelling air-sea exchanges and ocean surface processes in polar regions. While the role of sea ice in damping open-water swell waves has received considerable research interest, the impact of sea ice on locally generated wind-wave growth in partial ice cover remains uncertain. The current approach in spectral wave models is to scale the wind input term by the open-water fraction, \(1-\phi\), for \(\phi\) the sea ice concentration (SIC), but this neglects the impact of subgrid-scale patterns of sea ice coverage in limiting fetch for wind-wave growth. Here, we use the spectral wave model SWAN to simulate wave growth in realistic, synthetic fields of explicitly resolved sea ice floes over a range of SICs and floe size distributions (FSDs). Through geometric arguments, we show that the fetch available for wind-wave growth, and thus the resulting wave statistics, depends on a combination of the SIC and the FSD. The combination of geometric scaling and empirical wave laws allows the prediction of bulk wave statistics as a function of SIC, a characteristic floe size, and wind speed. We show that due to the difference in spectral character from attenuated propagating open-ocean swell, these waves may have an outsized impact on ocean mixing regimes.

A document by Jim Thomson. Click on the document to view its contents.

Increasing extent and duration of seasonally ice-free area in the western Arctic Ocean suggests increased air-sea coupling, specifically fluxes of momentum and heat between the lower atmosphere and the upper ocean. The dependence of these fluxes on ice concentration and its dynamical characteristics is still uncertain. As part of the Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic (SODA) project, year-long time series of upper-ocean velocity profiles were obtained across a range of ice conditions and are used to infer momentum fluxes. We consider the structure of observed current profiles as a function of sea state and ice cover. During the summer and in open water with minimal stratification, the wind forcing is in local equilibrium with surface gravity waves, and there is a direct transfer of momentum from the atmosphere to the upper ocean. The presence of ice modifies the momentum budget through both the inclusion of ice-atmosphere and ice-ocean stresses, and by damping short surface gravity waves and thus changing the surface roughness that the atmosphere acts upon. Ice presence is also associated with increased near-surface stratification, which can act to decouple the sub-surface ocean from atmospheric forcing. Our observations show frequent decoupling of a thin surface layer (<10 m depth), including case studies in which the relatively fresh surface waters formed by “ice puddles” have entirely different motion from the relatively salty water a few meters below. Ice formation in the fall affects both the ocean stratification and the ice characteristics, leading to competing effects affecting momentum transfer. Initial results across the annual cycle are presented.

The retreat of Arctic sea ice is enabling increased ocean surface wave activity at the sea ice edge, yet the physical processes governing interactions between waves and sea ice are not fully understood. Here, we use a collection of in situ observations of waves in ice to evaluate a recent global climate model experiment that includes coupled interactions between ocean waves and the sea ice floe size distribution. Observations come from subsurface moorings and free-drifting buoys spanning 2012-2019 in the Beaufort Sea, and we group the data based on distance inside the ice edge for comparison with model results. Locally generated wind waves are relatively prevalent in observations beyond 100 km inside the ice but are absent in the model. Low-frequency swell, however, is present in the model, while subsurface moorings located more than 100 km inside the ice do not report any swell with significant wave height exceeding the instruments' detection limits. These results motivate further model development and future observing campaigns, suggesting that local wave generation inside the ice edge may play a significant role for floe fracture while demonstrating a need for more robust constraints on wave attenuation by sea ice.

The retreat of Arctic sea ice coincides with increased ocean surface wave activity, and wave-ice interactions are consequently poised to have a growing influence on the Arctic climate system. Recent field campaigns have focused on rectifying the scarcity of wave measurements inside the marginal ice zone, and work is now underway to incorporate wave-ice interactions in global climate models. Here, we apply a collection of in situ wave observations spanning multiple years in the Beaufort Sea and including wave activity beyond 100 kilometers inside the sea ice edge. To better understand waves in the presence of sea ice, we connect the in situ data with satellite-derived ice concentrations across the Arctic and compare the observations with a recent global climate model experiment that includes coupled interactions between waves and a sea ice floe size distribution. We present a series of comparisons focused on wave energy and wind-wave relationships in partial ice cover. These analyses provide a framework for assessing the impact of uncertainty in wave-ice physics on the marginal ice zone in new experiments in the coupled wave-ice model. Our work guides further model development and future observational campaigns.

Understanding and predicting sea ice dynamics and ice-ocean feedback processes requires accurate descriptions of momentum fluxes across the ice-ocean interface. In this study, we present observations from an array of moorings in the Beaufort Sea. Using a force-balance approach, we determine ice-ocean drag coefficient values over an annual cycle and a range of ice conditions. Statistics from high resolution ice draft measurements are used to calculate expected drag coefficient values from morphology-based parameterization schemes. With both approaches, drag coefficient values ranged from approximately 1-10×10^-3, with a minimum in fall and a maximum at the end of spring, consistent with previous observations. The parameterizations do a reasonable job of predicting the observed drag values if the under ice geometry is known, and reveal that keel drag is the primary contributor to the total ice-ocean drag coefficient. When translations of bulk model outputs to ice geometry are included in the parameterizations, they overpredict drag on floe edges, leading to the inverted seasonal cycle seen in prior models. Using these results to investigate the efficiency of total momentum flux across the atmosphere-ice-ocean interface suggests an inter-annual trend of increasing coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean.