Session Announcement and Call for Papers
Sea Ice Mass Balance of the Arctic: Contribution of Sea Ice Dynamics
American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting
10-14 December 2007
San Francisco, California
Abstract Submission Deadline: 6 September 2007
For further information, please go to:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=473
Talks, posters, and papers are invited for Session C09: "Sea Ice Mass
Balance of the Arctic: Contribution of Sea Ice Dynamics" being convened
at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting on 10-14 December
2007 in San Francisco, California.
Session description:
The mass balance of sea ice is a function of the extent and thickness of
the ice cover. To evaluate the evolution of the mass balance it is
necessary to consider the evolution of the ice thickness distribution.
Changes in the ice thickness distribution are controlled by
thermodynamic ice growth and melt and mechanical redistribution through
ridging and rafting and transport. Rates of ice growth and melt are
dominated by heterogeneity due to spatial variability of ice thickness,
snow cover, and surface conditions. This heterogeneity is controlled by
the super-position of thermodynamic response on an icescape created by
mechanical redistribution. This mechanical redistribution occurs
abruptly, predominantly during the winter months, when linear regions of
deformation are manifested in organized leads and ridges. To understand
the impact of ice dynamics on sea ice mass balance, an accurate
representation of how ridging, rafting, and new ice growth is related to
variability in surface stress forcing on the ice pack is required. These
processes are modelled by empirical relationships between pack ice
stress, strain rate, and redistribution. Confidence in these models
affects interpretation of modelled sea ice trends. Hence it is important
that empirical stress-strain rate-redistribution models represent
observed sea ice deformation patterns and variability.
Session conveners welcome contributions from observational and model
investigations of interactions between sea ice dynamics and mass balance
at all scales influenced by sea ice deformation. Conveners particularly
encourage contributions addressing: (a) the direct verification of sea
ice stress-strain rate and redistribution models to improve
understanding of how well current models reproduce dynamic-thermodynamic
feedbacks, (b) the development of models that more accurately reproduce
observed pack ice dynamics, and (c) improvements in techniques aimed at
observing sea ice deformation and mass balance change.
Conveners:
Jennifer Hutchings
University of Alaska Fairbanks, International Arctic Research Center
E-mail: jenny [at] iarc.uaf.edu
Cathleen Geiger
University of Deleware
E-mail: cgeiger [at] UDel.Edu
Christian Haas
Alfred Wegener Institut
E-mail: chaas [at] awi.de
Further information and abstract submission procedures are available at:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/