Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS)

Arctic Sea Ice Kinematics







The Arctic sea ice, and more largely the Arctic system, is undergoing significant changes. Since several decades, we observe a rapid reduction of the ice cover that is expressed in terms of sea ice extent as well as total volume decreases. This decline is explained almost entirely by thinning and loss of old multiyear sea-ice due to melting and ice export out of the Arctic basin. However, the rate of speed at which this decline occurs remains poorly understood. For example, some general questions are still under debate. (i) What are the physical processes that are responsible for/or amplify this dramatic reduction? (ii) What are their relative importance? (iii) In the perspective of a better Arctic sea ice state and climate forecasting, how could we improve the “Arctic part” of the actual numerical models?

During this talk, we will focused on the sea ice kinematics, their statistical and scaling properties, and discussed about these in terms of potential processes responsible for the recent sea ice decline. In particular, we will present the diffusion and dispersion properties of sea ice obtained from the analysis of in-situ observations, i.e the IABP buoys trajectories. Implications of our results in terms of sea ice rheology and modeling framework will be discussed.
As a perspective, and to propose an alternative in agreement with what our results suggest, a new (and under development) elastic-brittle (EB) rheological model for sea ice will be shortly introduced.