Experimental evidence for a universal threshold characterizing wave-induced sea ice break-up

• Main Authors: J. J. Voermans, J. Rabault, K. Filchuk, I. Ryzhov, P. Heil, A. Marchenko, C. O. Collins III, M. Dabboor, G. Sutherland, A. V. Babanin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2020-11-01
• Series: The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/4265/2020/tc-14-4265-2020.pdf

<p>Waves can drastically transform a sea ice cover by inducing break-up over vast distances in the course of a few hours. However, relatively few detailed studies have described this phenomenon in a quantitative manner, and the process of sea ice break-up by waves needs to be further parameterized and verified before it can be reliably included in forecasting models. In the present work, we discuss sea ice break-up parameterization and demonstrate the existence of an observational threshold separating breaking and non-breaking cases. This threshold is based on information from two recent field campaigns, supplemented with existing observations of sea ice break-up. The data used cover a wide range of scales, from laboratory-grown sea ice to polar field observations. Remarkably, we show that both field and laboratory observations tend to converge to a single quantitative threshold at which the wave-induced sea ice break-up takes place, which opens a promising avenue for robust parametrization in operational forecasting models.</p>