A probabilistic seabed–ice keel interaction model

Abstract

Landfast ice is a common coastal feature in the Arctic Ocean and around the Antarctic continent. One contributing and stabilizing mechanism is the grounding of sea ice ridges in shallow water. Recently, a grounding scheme representing this effect on sea ice dynamics was developed in order to improve the simulation of landfast ice by continuum-based sea ice models. This parameterization assumes that the ridged keel thickness is proportional to the mean thickness. Results demonstrated that this simple parameterization notably improves the simulation of landfast ice in many regions such as in the East Siberian Sea, the Laptev Sea and along the Alaskan coast. Nevertheless, a weakness of this approach is that it is based solely on the mean properties of sea ice. Here, we extend the parameterization by taking into account subgrid-scale ice thickness distribution and bathymetry distribution, which are generally non-normal, and by computing the maximum seabed stress as a joint probability interaction between the sea ice and the seabed. The probabilistic approach shows a reasonably good agreement with observations and with the previously proposed grounding scheme while potentially offering more physical insights into the formation of landfast ice.