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Scale-dependent air-sea exchange in the polar oceans: floe-floe and floe-flow coupling in the generation of ice-ocean boundary layer turbulence
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  • Samuel Dale Brenner,
  • Christopher Horvat,
  • Paul Hall,
  • Anna Lo Piccolo,
  • Baylor Fox-Kemper,
  • Stéphane Labbé,
  • Véronique Dansereau
Samuel Dale Brenner
Brown University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Christopher Horvat
Brown University
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Paul Hall
Brown University
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Anna Lo Piccolo
Brown University
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Baylor Fox-Kemper
Brown University
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Stéphane Labbé
Sorbonne Université
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Véronique Dansereau
Institut des Sciences de la Terre , Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS UMR 5275
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Abstract

Sea ice is a heterogeneous, evolving mosaic comprised of many individual floes, which vary in spatial scales from meters to tens of kilometers. Both the internal dynamics of the floe mosaic (floe-floe interactions), and the evolution of floes under ocean and atmospheric forcing (floe-flow interactions), determine the exchange of heat, momentum, and tracers between the lower atmosphere and upper polar oceans. Climate models do not represent either of these highly variable interactions. We use a novel, high-resolution, discrete element modelling framework to examine the production of ice-ocean boundary layer (IOBL) turbulence within a domain approximately the size of a climate model grid. We show floe-scale effects cause a marked increase in IOBL turbulent production relative to continuum model approaches, and provide a method of representing that turbulence using bulk parameters related to the spatial variance of the ice and ocean: the floe size distribution and the ocean kinetic energy spectrum.
02 Aug 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
04 Aug 2023Published in ESS Open Archive