Scaling in Fracture and Refreezing of Sea Ice
نویسنده
چکیده
Sea ice breaks up and regenerates rapidly during winter conditions in the Arctic. Analyzing satellite data from the Kara Sea, we find that the average ice floe size depends on weather conditions. Nevertheless, the frequency of floes of size A is a power law, N ∼ A−τ , where τ = 1.6 ± 0.2, for A less than approximately 100 km. This scale-invariant behaviour suggests a competition between fracture due to strains in the ice field and refreezing of the fractures. A cellular model for this process gives results consistent with observations.
منابع مشابه
Fracture networks in sea ice
*Correspondence: Alex Hansen, Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N–7491 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: [email protected] Fracturing and refreezing of sea ice in the Kara sea are investigated using complex network analysis. By going to the dual network, where the fractures are nodes and their intersections links, we gain access to topological features which are e...
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