A Two‐Part Model for Wave‐Sea Ice Interaction: Attenuation and Break‐Up

Waves and sea ice form a closely coupled system: waves govern through stress, floe break-up, wave-induced currents, while affects attenuation reflection. Wave-induced break-up is particularly important as it can regulate air-sea interaction consequently also the growth melt of ice. This nature complex generally, especially at large scale, neglected in modeling polar climate system. Here, we explore novel way coupling conduct case study for Antarctic summer 2019/2020. Our approach builds upon previous investigations follows: (a) takes binary form, either “broken” or ”unbroken,” (b) may break ice, transitioning from unbroken to broken, (c) threshold separating breaking nonbreaking wave fields used identify when this occurs, two modes (dependent state), representing observed on/off switch attenuation. By characterizing described above, achieve two-way wave-sea coupling, thereby allowing feedbacks. model limited ice-melt season refreeze not represented here. We demonstrate that our simulate both wavefield evolution Marginal Ice Zone. results show validity empirically derived threshold, substantiate have critical influence on morphology