[1] Aided by submarine observations of ice thickness for model evaluation, we investigate the effects of assimilating buoy motion data and satellite SSM/I (85 Ghz) ice motion data on simulation of Arctic sea ice. The sea-ice model is a thickness and enthalpy distribution model and is coupled to an ocean model. Ice motion data are assimilated by means of optimal interpolation. Assimilating motio...

The Arctic sea ice cover is thinning and retreating, causing changes in surface roughness that in turn modify the momentum flux from the atmosphere through the ice into the ocean. New model simulations comprising variable sea ice drag coefficients for both the air and water interface demonstrate that the heterogeneity in sea ice surface roughness significantly impacts the spatial distribution a...

There is growing evidence that a metastable phase of ice, cubic ice, plays an important role in the Earth's troposphere and stratosphere. Cubic ice may also be important in diverse fields such as cryobiology and planetary sciences. Using X-ray diffraction, we studied the formation of cubic ice in pure water droplets suspended in an oil matrix as a function of droplet size. The results show that...

J.M. Grebmeier and W. Maslowski (eds.), The Pacifi c Arctic Region: Ecosystem Status and Trends in a Rapidly Changing Environment, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-8863-2_3, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Over the past several decades, there has been a fundamental shift in sea ice cover, age, and thickness across the Pacifi c Arctic Region (PAR). Satellite data reveal that tren...

Rapid decline in Arctic sea ice cover in the 21st century may have wide-reaching effects on the Arctic climate system, including the Greenland ice sheet mass balance. Here, we investigate whether local changes in sea ice around the Greenland ice sheet have had an impact on Greenland surface melt. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between sea ice concentration, the timing of melt ons...

America’s Ice Industry: A Case Study The American ice industry thrived in 19th century New England. The “Ice King,” Frederic Tudor of Boston, sent his first shipment of ice from the port of Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Martinique in the West Indies in 1806. Fifty years later, his company was shipping nearly 150 tons of ice per year to several U.S. ports, the Caribbean islands, Rio de Janeiro,...

The Arctic sea ice cover is in decline. The areal extent of the ice cover has been decreasing for the past few decades at an accelerating rate. Evidence also points to a decrease in sea ice thickness and a reduction in the amount of thicker perennial sea ice. A general global warming trend has made the ice cover more vulnerable to natural fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic forcing. The obs...

© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. 1Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel. 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. *e-mail: ...

Fast flowing ice streams and outlet glaciers provide the major avenues for ice flow from past and present ice sheets. These ice streams move faster than the surrounding ice sheet by a factor of one hundred or more. Several mechanisms for fast ice stream flow have been identified, leading to a spectrum of different ice stream types. In this paper we discuss the two end members of this spectrum, ...

In order to improve the treatment of ice nucleation in a more realistic manner in the Community Atmosphere Model version 5.3 (CAM5.3), the effects of pre-existing ice crystals on ice nucleation in cirrus clouds are considered. In addition, by considering the in-cloud variability in ice saturation ratio, homogeneous nucleation takes place spatially only in a portion of the cirrus cloud rather th...