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Sun on Sea Ice
by
Mark McGuinness
Victoria University of Wellington
Temperature measurements taken in young landfast Antarctic sea ice show daily oscillations consistent with heating by solar radiation. We present and solve a heat conduction model for the temperature with a nonlinear thermal capacity and a distributed source term for solar power absorption based on Monte Carlo scattering simulations of penetrating photons. Asymptotic methods are used that take advantage of small amplitudes of daily oscillations. We observe two characteristic modes for solar heating in sea ice, one dominated by travelling thermal waves or conduction in the upper half, and the other dominated by in-place solar heating in the lower half. We note that deep thermal responses to solar radiation are larger by a factor of ~ 10 than predicted by scattering measurements, due possibly to the presence of algae and/or dissolved organic material.
Date received: September 26, 2000
Copyright © 2000 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caek-22.