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Modelling Sea Ice and Melt Ponds Evolution: Sensitivity to Microscale Heat Transfer Mechanisms

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Book cover Mathematical Approach to Climate Change and its Impacts

Part of the book series: Springer INdAM Series ((SINDAMS,volume 38))

Abstract

We present a mathematical model describing the evolution of sea ice and meltwater during summer. The system is described by two coupled partial differential equations for the ice thickness h and pond depth w fields. We test the sensitivity of the model to variations of parameters controlling fluid-dynamic processes at the pond level, namely the variation of turbulent heat flux with pond depth and the lateral melting of ice enclosing a pond. We observe that different heat flux scalings determine different rates of total surface ablations, while the system is relatively robust in terms of probability distributions of pond surface areas. Finally, we study pond morphology in terms of fractal dimensions, showing that the role of lateral melting is minor, whereas there is evidence of an impact from the initial sea ice topography.

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Acknowledgements

AS and DM acknowledge financial support from the National Group of Mathematical Physics of the Italian National Institute of High Mathematics (GNFM-INdAM). EC acknowledge supports form the French National Agency for Research (ANR) under the grant SEAS (ANR-13-JS09-0010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo ‘M. Picone’, CNR, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Scagliarini & Daniela Mansutti

  2. Université de Lille, Unité de Mécanique de Lille, UML EA 7512, Lille, France

    Enrico Calzavarini

  3. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Federico Toschi

  4. Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo ‘M. Picone’, CNR, Rome, Italy

    Federico Toschi

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  1. Andrea Scagliarini
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  2. Enrico Calzavarini
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  3. Daniela Mansutti
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  4. Federico Toschi
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Correspondence to Andrea Scagliarini .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy

    Piermarco Cannarsa

  2. Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo ‘M. Picone’, CNR, Rome, Italy

    Daniela Mansutti

  3. Institute of Geosciences & Earth Resources (IGG), National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy

    Antonello Provenzale

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Scagliarini, A., Calzavarini, E., Mansutti, D., Toschi, F. (2020). Modelling Sea Ice and Melt Ponds Evolution: Sensitivity to Microscale Heat Transfer Mechanisms. In: Cannarsa, P., Mansutti, D., Provenzale, A. (eds) Mathematical Approach to Climate Change and its Impacts. Springer INdAM Series, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38669-6_6

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