Articles | Volume 16, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-2565-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-2565-2022
Research article
 | 
28 Jun 2022
Research article |  | 28 Jun 2022

Sea ice floe size: its impact on pan-Arctic and local ice mass and required model complexity

Adam William Bateson, Daniel L. Feltham, David Schröder, Yanan Wang, Byongjun Hwang, Jeff K. Ridley, and Yevgeny Aksenov

Related authors

Summer sea ice floe perimeter density in the Arctic: high-resolution optical satellite imagery and model evaluation
Yanan Wang, Byongjun Hwang, Adam William Bateson, Yevgeny Aksenov, and Christopher Horvat
The Cryosphere, 17, 3575–3591, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3575-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3575-2023, 2023
Short summary
Toward a marginal Arctic sea ice cover: changes to freezing, melting and dynamics
Rebecca Caitlin Frew, Daniel Feltham, David Schroeder, and Adam William Bateson
The Cryosphere Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2023-91,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2023-91, 2023
Preprint under review for TC
Short summary
Impact of sea ice floe size distribution on seasonal fragmentation and melt of Arctic sea ice
Adam W. Bateson, Daniel L. Feltham, David Schröder, Lucia Hosekova, Jeff K. Ridley, and Yevgeny Aksenov
The Cryosphere, 14, 403–428, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-403-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-403-2020, 2020
Short summary

Related subject area

Discipline: Sea ice | Subject: Numerical Modelling
How many parameters are needed to represent polar sea ice surface patterns and heterogeneity?
Joseph Fogarty, Elie Bou-Zeid, Mitchell Bushuk, and Linette Boisvert
The Cryosphere, 18, 4335–4354, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-4335-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-4335-2024, 2024
Short summary
Exploring non-Gaussian sea ice characteristics via observing system simulation experiments
Christopher Riedel and Jeffrey Anderson
The Cryosphere, 18, 2875–2896, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-2875-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-2875-2024, 2024
Short summary
Past and future of the Arctic sea ice in High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP) climate models
Julia Selivanova, Doroteaciro Iovino, and Francesco Cocetta
The Cryosphere, 18, 2739–2763, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-2739-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-2739-2024, 2024
Short summary
Data-driven surrogate modeling of high-resolution sea-ice thickness in the Arctic
Charlotte Durand, Tobias Sebastian Finn, Alban Farchi, Marc Bocquet, Guillaume Boutin, and Einar Ólason
The Cryosphere, 18, 1791–1815, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1791-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1791-2024, 2024
Short summary
Using Icepack to reproduce ice mass balance buoy observations in landfast ice: improvements from the mushy-layer thermodynamics
Mathieu Plante, Jean-François Lemieux, L. Bruno Tremblay, Adrienne Tivy, Joey Angnatok, François Roy, Gregory Smith, Frédéric Dupont, and Adrian K. Turner
The Cryosphere, 18, 1685–1708, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1685-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1685-2024, 2024
Short summary

Cited articles

Aksenov, Y., Popova, E. E., Yool, A., Nurser, A. J. G., Williams, T. D., Bertino, L., and Bergh, J.: On the future navigability of Arctic sea routes: High-resolution projections of the Arctic Ocean and sea ice, Mar. Policy, 75, 300–317, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2015.12.027, 2017. 
Alberello, A., Onorato, M., Bennetts, L., Vichi, M., Eayrs, C., MacHutchon, K., and Toffoli, A.: Brief communication: Pancake ice floe size distribution during the winter expansion of the Antarctic marginal ice zone, The Cryosphere, 13, 41–48, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-41-2019, 2019. 
Arntsen, A. E., Song, A. J., Perovich, D. K., and Richter-Menge, J. A.: Observations of the summer breakup of an Arctic sea ice cover, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 8057–8063, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065224, 2015. 
Åstrom, J. A., Ouchterlony, F., Linna, R. P., and Timonen, J.: Universal dynamic fragmentation in D dimensions, Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 245506​​​​​​​, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.245506, 2004. 
Bateson, A. W.: Fragmentation and melting of the seasonal sea ice cover, PhD thesis, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, United Kingdom, 293 pp., https://doi.org/10.48683/1926.00098821, 2021a. 
Download
Short summary
Numerical models are used to understand the mechanisms that drive the evolution of the Arctic sea ice cover. The sea ice cover is formed of pieces of ice called floes. Several recent studies have proposed variable floe size models to replace the standard model assumption of a fixed floe size. In this study we show the need to include floe fragmentation processes in these variable floe size models and demonstrate that model design can determine the impact of floe size on size ice evolution.