Publication Date:
2018-09-14
Description:
Understanding how upper-ocean heat content evolves and affects sea ice in the polar regions is necessary to predict past, present, and future weather and climate. Sea ice, a composite of individual floes, varies significantly on scales as small as meters. Lateral gradients in surface forcing across sea-ice concentration gradients can energize subgrid-scale ocean eddies that mix heat in the surface layer and control sea-ice melting. Here the development of baroclinic instability near floe edges is investigated using a high-resolution ocean circulation model, an idealization of a single grid cell of a climate model partially covered in thin, nearly static sea ice. From the resulting ocean circulation we characterize the strength of eddy-induced lateral mixing and heat transport, and the effects on sea-ice melting, as a function of state variables resolved in global climate models. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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