Melting and fragmentation laws from the evolution of two large Southern Ocean icebergs estimated from satellite data

Bouhier, Nicolas; Tournadre, Jean; Rémy, Frédérique; Gourves-Cousin, Rozenn

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2267-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2267-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2267-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 7

Research article

|

12 Jul 2018

Research article |

| 12 Jul 2018

Melting and fragmentation laws from the evolution of two large Southern Ocean icebergs estimated from satellite data

Nicolas Bouhier, Jean Tournadre, Frédérique Rémy, and Rozenn Gourves-Cousin

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2267-2018-supplement

Data sets

A comprehensive database for Antarctic iceberg tracking using scatterometer data J. S. Budge and D. G. Long https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2017.2784186

Short summary

The evolution of two large Southern Ocean icebergs, in terms of area and thickness, are used to study the melting and fragmentation laws of icebergs. The area and thickness are estimated by the mean of satellite images and radar altimeter data. Two classical formulations of melting are tested and a fragmentation law depending on the sea temperature and iceberg velocity is proposed and tested. The size distribution of the pieces generated by fragmentation is also estimated.