OBJECTIVES
Central Hypothesis
- During the winter, the dynamic response of the sea ice cover to wind forcing dominates the high frequency spatial and temporal variability of mass balance, by creating inhomogeneities that have a lasting effect on the energy balance.
Goals
- Improve our understanding of the relationship between sea ice thickness variability and sea ice motion variability by investigating stress and strain-rate relations with a comprehensive suite of spatiotemporal coincident observations.
- Determine if the viscous-plastic sea ice model, in a configuration used in current and next generation climate models, can realistically simulate the impact of ice dynamics on sea ice mass balance.
- Determine optimal sets of measurements to monitor pan-Arctic sea ice mass balance, utilizing model sensitivity studies to determine model uncertainties and identify key monitoring needs.
Objectives
- Characterize the relationship between strain rate and changes in the regional thickness distribution.
- Characterize the relationship between, and coherence of, stress and strain rate at 10km and 100km.
- Test theoretical relationships between stress, strain rate, and regional thickness distribution.
- Validate models of ice dynamics: How well do they reproduce observed sea ice mass balance given known strain rates and/or realistic wind stress fields?
Approaches
We address these objectives with a joint field-remote sensing-modeling campaign, taking advantage of the location and season of a U.S. Navy Ice Camp in 2007. Our campaign builds upon previous individual efforts, by coordinating modeling, remote sensing and field expertise to provide an integrated view of the spatiotemporal variability of sea ice deformation and its impact on the sea ice mass balance. By synchronizing an ice thickness measurement campaign with deformation measurements, we provide a detailed analysis of the inter-relation between sea ice stress, strain rate and mass balance.
