Sea ice heat and mass balance measurements from four autonomous buoys during the MOSAiC drift campaign
[1];
- Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (United States)
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)
- Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai (China)
- University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States)
As part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), four autonomous seasonal ice mass balance buoys were deployed in first- and second-year ice. These buoys measured position, barometric pressure, snow depth, ice thickness, ice growth, surface melt, bottom melt, and vertical profiles of temperature from the air, through the snow and ice, and into the upper ocean. Observed air temperatures were similar at all four sites; however, snow–ice interface temperatures varied by as much as 10°C, primarily due to differences in snow depth. Observed winter ice growth rates (November to May) were <1 cm day-1, with summer melt rates (June to July) as large as 5 cm day-1. Air temperatures changed as much as 2°C hour-1 but were dampened to <0.3°C hour-1 at the snow–ice interface. Initial October ice thicknesses ranged from 0.3 m in first-year ice to 1.2 m in second-year ice. By February, this range was only 1.20–1.46 m, due in part to differences in the onset of basal freezing. In second-year ice, this delay was due to large brine-filled voids in the ice; propagating the cold front through this ice required freezing the brine. Mass balance results were similar to those measured by autonomous buoys deployed at the North Pole from 2000 to 2013. Winter average estimates of the ocean heat flux ranged from 0 to 3 W m-2, with a large increase in June 2020 as the floe moved into warmer water. Estimates of average snow thermal conductivity measured at two buoys during periods of linear temperature profiles were 0.41 and 0.42 W m-1 °C-1, higher than previously published estimates. Results from these ice mass balance buoys can contribute to efforts to close the MOSAiC heat budget.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Data Center
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0021341; OPP–1724540; OPP–1724424; OPP–2034919; 41976219
- OSTI ID:
- 2281200
- Journal Information:
- Elementa, Vol. 11, Issue 1; ISSN 2325-1026
- Publisher:
- University of California PressCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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