Experimental evidence for a universal threshold characterizing wave-induced sea ice break-up

TL;DR

This study identifies a universal threshold for wave-induced sea ice break-up, integrating laboratory and field data to improve predictive models of sea ice behavior under wave influence.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of a universal observational threshold for sea ice break-up caused by waves, bridging laboratory and field observations for better modeling.

Findings

A universal threshold for sea ice break-up by waves was identified.

Laboratory and field data converge at this threshold, enabling improved parameterization.

The threshold can be used to enhance sea ice break-up predictions in forecasting models.

Abstract

Waves can drastically transform a sea ice cover by inducing break-up over vast distances in the course of a few hours. However, relatively few detailed studies have described this phenomenon in a quantitative manner, and the process of sea ice break-up by waves needs to be further parameterized and verified before it can be reliably included in forecasting models. In the present work, we discuss sea ice break-up parameterization and demonstrate the existence of an observational threshold separating breaking and non-breaking cases. This threshold is based on information from two recent field campaigns, supplemented with existing observations of sea ice break-up. The data used cover a wide range of scales, from laboratory-grown sea ice to polar field observations. Remarkably, we show that both field and laboratory observations tend to converge to a single quantitative threshold at which the wave-induced sea ice break-up takes place, which opens a promising avenue for robust parametrization in operational forecasting models.