Physics of the Seasonal Sea Ice Zone.

The seasonal sea ice zone encompasses the region between the winter maximum and summer minimum sea ice extent. In both the Arctic and Antarctic, the majority of the ice cover can now be classified as seasonal. Here, we review the sea ice physics that governs the evolution of seasonal sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, spanning sea ice growth, melt, and dynamics and including interactions with ocean surface waves as well as other coupled processes.

Typical and anomalous pathways of surface-floating material in the Northern North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean.

Surface waters of the oceans carry large amounts of material, including sediment grains, plankton organisms, and ice crystals, as well as pollutants, e.g., oil and plastic.

Trends and variability of the atmosphere-ocean turbulent heat flux in the extratropical Southern Hemisphere.

Ocean-atmosphere interactions are complex and extend over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Among the key components of these interactions is the ocean-atmosphere (latent and sensible) turbulent heat flux (THF). Here, based on daily optimally-interpolated data from the extratropical Southern Hemisphere (south of 30°S) from a period 1985-2013, we analyze short-term variability and trends in THF and variables influencing it.

Molecular-dynamics simulation of clustering processes in sea-ice floes.

In seasonally ice-covered seas and along the margins of perennial ice pack, i.e., in regions with medium ice concentrations, the ice cover typically consists of separate floes interacting with each other by inelastic collisions.

Sea-ice floe-size distribution in the context of spontaneous scaling emergence in stochastic systems.

Sea-ice floe-size distribution (FSD) in ice-pack covered seas influences many aspects of ocean-atmosphere interactions. However, data concerning FSD in the polar oceans are still sparse and processes shaping the observed FSD properties are poorly understood. Typically, power-law FSDs are assumed although no feasible explanation has been provided neither for this one nor for other properties of the observed distributions.