Preconditioning of Summer Melt Ponds From Winter Sea Ice Surface Temperature

Abstract

Melt ponds on Arctic sea ice are an important component of the summer energy budget (e.g., Nicolaus et al., 2012). Melt water collects at the ice surface during summer melt in topographic lows. Melt ponds contribute to the ice-albedo feedback by lowering the surface albedo (e.g., Curry et al., 1995;Light et al., 2022). For autumn, Anhaus et al. (2021) showed that melt ponds influence light transmission. The preconditioning of melt ponds can be partly explained by ice topography (e.g., Flocco et al., 2015;Polashenski et al., 2012), predominately for deformed second-year ice (SYI), or snow dunes and snow accumulations (Petrich et al., 2012;Polashenski et al., 2012), mainly on level first-year ice (FYI). Additional factors for melt pond preconditioning are ice permeability and pond hydrology (Eicken et al., 2002(Eicken et al., , 2004. There are distinct differences between melt ponds on level or deformed ice. The melt pond location and size are controlled by the topography of deformed ice while on level ice melt ponds can cover large areas (Webster et al., 2022). The ice topography, induced by ridges or leads, are either remnant from the previous seasons' dynamic events or can be newly created due to ice dynamics and/or snow accumulation (Polashenski et al., 2012). Also, refrozen melt ponds can have a lower ice surface elevation and ice thickness compared to the surroundings. There are still large uncertainties in models to predict melt pond