Of Ocean Waves and Sea Ice

Squire, Vernon A.; Dugan, John P.; Wadhams, Peter; Rottier, Philip J.; Liu, Antony K.

doi:10.1146/annurev.fl.27.010195.000555

Cited by 358 publications

(134 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Coupling between waves and sea ice is complex (e.g., Squire et al, 1995;Squire, 2007). While the inclusion of the waveice dissipation term is a step to incorporate improved waveice processes within the wave model, redistribution of the wave energy through scattering must also be considered (Squire et al, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the inclusion of the waveice dissipation term is a step to incorporate improved waveice processes within the wave model, redistribution of the wave energy through scattering must also be considered (Squire et al, 1995). Furthermore, wind-wave generation in partially ice-covered waters is expected to be more complex than as parameterized in present wave models (Li et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wave climate in the Arctic 1992–2014: seasonality and trends

2016

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Abstract. Over the past decade, the diminishing Arctic sea ice has impacted the wave field, which depends on the icefree ocean and wind. This study characterizes the wave climate in the Arctic spanning 1992-2014 from a merged altimeter data set and a wave hindcast that uses CFSR winds and ice concentrations from satellites as input. The model performs well, verified by the altimeters, and is relatively consistent for climate studies. The wave seasonality and extremes are linked to the ice coverage, wind strength, and wind direction, creating distinct features in the wind seas and swells. The altimeters and model show that the reduction of sea ice coverage causes increasing wave heights instead of the wind. However, trends are convoluted by interannual climate oscillations like the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In the Nordic Greenland Sea the NAO influences the decreasing wind speeds and wave heights. Swells are becoming more prevalent and windsea steepness is declining. The satellite data show the sea ice minimum occurs later in fall when the wind speeds increase. This creates more favorable conditions for wave development. Therefore we expect the ice freeze-up in fall to be the most critical season in the Arctic and small changes in ice cover, wind speeds, and wave heights can have large impacts to the evolution of the sea ice throughout the year. It is inconclusive how important wave-ice processes are within the climate system, but selected events suggest the importance of waves within the marginal ice zone.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wave climate in the Arctic 1992–2014: seasonality and trends

2016

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“…These are quite distinct circumstances to wave propagation through a band of loose ice floes, where waves are scattered by the edges of discrete 'rafts' that are also free to respond as autonomous compliant floating bodies and wavelengths are of the same order as floe diameters. The synthesis of Squire [12], a cognate study focused on offshore engineering hydroelasticity [13], and an earlier review [1] have extended sections on wave propagation through continuous sea ice, although the bulk of the reported work is theoretical as few experiments have been done. We do not intend to rehash these works, although there is inevitably some overlap and the same single theoretical framework advanced in the earlier papers will be used.…”

Section: Continuous Icementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While warmer summer temperatures undoubtedly caused melting, a significant proportion of Arctic Basin sea-ice survived the aestival onslaught to become heavily deformed multi-year ice that circumgyred the polar mediterranean basin before exiting at Fram Strait or the northern Barents Sea. Near ice-free areas, in regions where open ocean processes are influential such as the northern Greenland Sea, surface waves and swells penetrated the pack ice with sufficient intensity to fracture local ice floes and regulate their size but, apart from the longest swells, they were soon attenuated before reaching the deep ice interior [1,2]. In the winter Southern Ocean, recalling that the vast proportion of sea ice here is first year ice that disintegrates during the austral summer, the ice cover appearance is typically quite different.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Past, present and impendent hydroelastic challenges in the polar and subpolar seas

Squire

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Current and emergent advances are examined on the topic of hydroelasticity theory applied to natural sea ice responding to the action of ocean surface waves and swell, with attention focused on methods that portray sea ice more faithfully as opposed to those that oversimplify interactions with a poor imitation of reality. A succession of authors have confronted and solved by various means the demanding applied mathematics associated with ocean waves (i) entering a vast sea-ice plate, (ii) travelling between plates of different thickness, (iii) impinging on a pressure ridge, (iv) affecting a single ice floe with arbitrarily specified physical and material properties, and (v) many such features or mixtures thereof. The next step is to embed simplified versions of these developments in an oceanic general circulation model for forecasting purposes. While targeted on specific sea-ice situations, many of the reported results are equally applicable to the interaction of waves with very large floating structures, such as pontoons, floating airports and mobile offshore bases.

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“…The scattering process is conservative as it redistributes the wave energy spatially, so waves penetrating ice fields are gradually reflected, causing an apparent exponential decay of wave energy with distance from the ice edge. Much attention has been given to the development of realistic wave scattering models and extracting an attenuation coefficient characterizing the decay of wave energy (see the review papers of Squire et al [1995] and Squire [2007Squire [ , 2011 for a comprehensive discussion). A number of nonconservative physical processes, such as wave breaking, floe collisions and overrafting, turbulence, overwash, and sea ice roughness and inelasticity, induce additional decay of wave energy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of viscoelastic‐type models for ocean wave attenuation in ice‐covered seas

2015

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Continuum‐based models that describe the propagation of ocean waves in ice‐infested seas are considered, where the surface ocean layer (including ice floes, brash ice, etc.) is modeled by a homogeneous viscoelastic material which causes waves to attenuate as they travel through the medium. Three ice layer models are compared, namely a viscoelastic fluid layer model currently being trialed in the spectral wave model WAVEWATCH III® and two simpler viscoelastic thin beam models. All three models are two dimensional. A comparative analysis shows that one of the beam models provides similar predictions for wave attenuation and wavelength to the viscoelastic fluid model. The three models are calibrated using wave attenuation data recently collected in the Antarctic marginal ice zone as an example. Although agreement with the data is obtained with all three models, several important issues related to the viscoelastic fluid model are identified that raise questions about its suitability to characterize wave attenuation in ice‐covered seas. Viscoelastic beam models appear to provide a more robust parameterization of the phenomenon being modeled, but still remain questionable as a valid characterization of wave‐ice interactions generally.

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Of Ocean Waves and Sea Ice

Cited by 358 publications

References 88 publications

Wave climate in the Arctic 1992–2014: seasonality and trends

Wave climate in the Arctic 1992–2014: seasonality and trends

Past, present and impendent hydroelastic challenges in the polar and subpolar seas

Comparison of viscoelastic‐type models for ocean wave attenuation in ice‐covered seas

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