We study the properties of water at the surface of an antifreeze protein with femtosecond surface sum frequency generation spectroscopy. We find clear evidence for the presence of ice-like water layers at the ice-binding site of the protein in aqueous solution at temperatures above the freezing point. Decreasing the temperature to the biological working temperature of the protein (0 °C to -2 °C...

Gas-liquid-solid phase transition behaviour of water is studied with environmental scanning electron microscopy for the first time. Abnormal phenomena are observed. At a fixed pressure of 450 Pa, with the temperature set to -7 °C, direct desublimation happens, and ice grows continuously along the substrate surface. At 550 Pa, although ice is the stable phase according to the phase diagram, meta...

Despite rapid melting in the coastal regions of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a significant area (~40%) of the ice sheet rarely experiences surface melting. In these regions, the controls on annual accumulation are poorly constrained owing to surface conditions (for example, surface clouds, blowing snow, and surface inversions), which render moisture flux estimates from myriad approaches (that is, e...

Polythermal ice sheets and glaciers contain both cold ice and temperate ice. We present two new models to describe the temperature and water content of such ice masses, accounting for the possibility of gravityand pressure-driven water drainage according to Darcy’s law. Both models are based on the principle of energy conservation; one additionally invokes the theory of viscous compaction to ca...

In situ Raman spectra of transformations of H2O as functions of pressure and temperature have been measured starting from high-density amorphous ice (HDA). Changes above Tx, the crystallization temperature of HDA, were observed. The spectra provide evidence for an abrupt, first-order-like, structural change that appears to be distinct from those associated with the transformation between low-de...

A 1-D ice cover model was developed to predict and constrain drivers of long-term ice thickness trends in chemically stratified lakes of Taylor Valley, Antarctica. The model is driven by surface radiative heat fluxes and heat fluxes from the underlying water column. The model successfully reproduced 16 a (between 1996 and 2012) of ice thickness changes for the west lobe of Lake Bonney (average ...

The Biochemist — February 2005. © 2005 Biochemical Society 12 of metres thick. The majority of the ice in the Southern Ocean lasts only less than 1 year, and the average Antarctic sea ice thickness is 1 m. In contrast, in the Arctic Ocean sea ice can last several years and the average thickness is generally 2 m. When ice forms from freshwater, the result is a hard brittle solid with the primary...

Using density functional molecular dynamics free energy calculations, we show that the body centered cubic (bcc) phase of superionic ice previously believed to be the only phase is, in fact, thermodynamically unstable compared to a novel phase with oxygen positions in face centered cubic lattice sites. The novel phase has a lower proton mobility than the bcc phase and may exhibit a higher melti...

Climate change has the potential to influence global mean sea level through a number of processes including (but not limited to) thermal expansion of the oceans and enhanced land ice melt. In addition to their contribution to global mean sea level change, these two processes (among others) lead to local departures from the global mean sea level change, through a number of mechanisms including t...

A decade has yielded much progress in understanding polar disturbance and community recovery-mainly through quantifying ice scour rates, other disturbance levels, larval abundance and diversity, colonization rates and response of benthos to predicted climate change. The continental shelf around Antarctica is clearly subject to massive disturbance, but remarkably across so many scales. In summer...