The Sensitivity of Sea Ice Brine Fraction to the Freezing Temperature and Orientation

TL;DR

This study models sea ice growth under various conditions to understand how freezing temperature and orientation affect brine content, revealing that warmer temperatures lead to higher brine fractions, impacting climate feedbacks.

Contribution

The paper provides a quantitative analysis of how freezing temperature and orientation influence brine fraction in sea ice, highlighting the sensitivity to temperature changes.

Findings

Brine mass fraction increases by 2.5% per 1°C rise in freezing temperature.

Sea ice growth rate is highest at cooler temperatures, fresher salinities, and bottom freezing orientation.

Brine content sensitivity has implications for climate feedbacks in warming scenarios.

Abstract

Pound for pound, sea ice is the most important component of Earth's climate system. The changing conditions in which sea ice forms and exists are likely to affect the properties of sea ice itself, and potential climate feedbacks need to be identified and understood to improve future projections. Here we perform a set of idealised experiments which model sea ice growth under a range of ambient salinities, freezing temperatures, and freezing orientations. The results confirm existing theories; sea ice growth rate is largest for cooler freezing temperatures, fresher ambient salinities, and bottom oriented freezing configuration. Our primary metric of interest is the brine mass fraction (the mass ratio of brine inclusions to the total sea ice), which we quantify and determine the sensitivity of with respect to changes in freezing conditions. We find that the brine mass fraction of our model sea ice is most sensitive to freezing temperature, and increases 2.5% per 1oC increase of freezing temperature. This finding suggests that future sea ice in warmer climate states will retain more brine, with subsequent flow on effects for circulations driven by brine rejection in the high-latitude oceans.