The long-term goal of this work is to increase the quantitative understanding of the partitioning of incident solar radiation by sea ice. The partitioning of shortwave radiation into components backscattered to the atmosphere, absorbed by the ice, and transmitted to the ocean is central to icealbedo feedback, the mean annual cycle of ice thickness, mechanical and biological properties of the ic...

Areas of dark ice have appeared on the Greenland ice sheet every summer in recent years. These are likely to have a great impact on the mass balance of the ice sheet because of their low albedo. We report annual and geographical variations in the bare ice and dark ice areas that appeared on the Greenland Ice Sheet from 2000 to 2014 by using MODIS satellite images. The July monthly mean of the e...

A global sea ice–ocean model is used to examine the impact of wind intensification on Antarctic sea ice volume. Based on the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data, there are increases in surface wind speed (0.13%yr) and convergence (0.66%yr) over the ice-covered areas of the SouthernOcean during the period 1979–2010. Driven by the intensifying winds, the model simulates an increase in sea ice speed, conver...

The global sea ice-ocean model ORCA2-LIM is used to investigate the impact of the thermal and mechanical forcing associated with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) on the Antarctic sea ice-ocean system. The model is driven by idealized forcings based on regressions between the wind stress and the air temperature at one hand and the SAM index the other hand. The wind-stress component strongly affec...

There are significant discrepancies between observational datasets of Arctic sea ice concentrations covering the last three decades, which result in differences of over 20% in Arctic summer sea ice extent/area and 5%–10% in winter. Previous modeling studies have shown that idealized sea ice anomalies have the potential for making a substantial impact on climate. In this paper, this theory is fu...

Glacier surfaces are not only composed of ice or snow but are heterogeneousmixtures of different materials. The occurrence and dynamics of light-absorbing impurities affect ice surface characteristics and strongly influence glacier melt processes. However, our understanding of the spatial distribution of impurities and their impact on ice surface characteristics and the glacier's energy budget ...

There are significant discrepancies between observational datasets of Arctic sea ice concentrations covering the last three decades, which result in differences of over 20% in Arctic summer sea ice extent/area and 5%–10% in winter. Previous modeling studies have shown that idealized sea ice anomalies have the potential for making a substantial impact on climate. In this paper, this theory is fu...

The remarkable ice storm that brought life to a standstill in most of Eastern Ontario and Quebec in January had a huge impact on medical services. Hospitals that lost power found themselves serving as shelters not only for patients but also for staff members and nearby residents. Doctors' offices were forced to close and a large number of operations were cancelled. The 2 articles that follow de...

Preserving hydrological variability is important when developing environmental flow regimes, and a number of tools have been developed to support this process. A commonly applied method is the index of hydrological alteration (IHA), which describes a set of indices that can be used to assess changes in flow regimes. In cold climate regions, river ice can have large effects on flow regimes throu...

We investigate viscoelastic impact basin relaxation on Pluto for a variety of thermal evolution scenarios encompassing both convective and conductive ice shells. Basins smaller than 200 km in diameter do not relax appreciably, while relaxation fractions can be up to ∼60% for large impact basins. The main control on basin relaxation is the amount of radiogenic heat produced in the rocky core; ou...