Brine Volume Fraction as a Habitability Metric for Europa's Ice Shell

Formation of brine channels in sea ice.

Liquid salty micro-channels (brine) between growing ice platelets in sea ice are an important habitat for CO2-binding microalgaea with great impact on polar ecosystems. The structure formation of ice platelets is microscopically described and a phase field model is developed. The pattern formation during solidification of the two-dimensional interstitial liquid is considered by two coupled orde...

Brine fluxes from growing sea ice

[1] It is well known that brine drainage from growing sea ice has a controlling influence on its mechanical, electromagnetic, biological and transport properties, and hence upon the buoyancy forcing and ecology in the polar oceans. When the ice has exceeded a critical thickness the drainage process is dominated by brine channels: liquid conduits extending through the ice. We describe a theoreti...

Back to the Future: Volume as a Quality Metric.

Exopolymer alteration of physical properties of sea ice and implications for ice habitability and biogeochemistry in a warmer Arctic.

The physical properties of Arctic sea ice determine its habitability. Whether ice-dwelling organisms can change those properties has rarely been addressed. Following discovery that sea ice contains an abundance of gelatinous extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), we examined the effects of algal EPS on the microstructure and salt retention of ice grown from saline solutions containing EPS fr...

Modeling the morphogenesis of brine channels in sea ice.

Brine channels are formed in sea ice under certain constraints and represent a habitat of different microorganisms. The complex system depends on a number of various quantities as salinity, density, pH value, or temperature. Each quantity governs the process of brine channel formation. There exists a strong link between bulk salinity and the presence of brine drainage channels in growing ice wi...