HR: 09:30h
AN: C21C-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Arctic sea ice melt in summer 2007: Surface and bottom ice ablation
AU: * Perovich, D K
EM: donald.k.perovich@erdc.usace.army.mil
AF: ERDC-CRREL, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755,
AU: Richter-Menge, J A
EM: jacqueline.a.richter-menge@erdc.usace.army.mil
AF: ERDC-CRREL, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755,
AU: Elder, B C
EM: bruce.c.elder@erdc.usace.army.mil
AF: ERDC-CRREL, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755,
AU: Claffey, K J
EM: keran.j.claffey@erdc.usace.army.mil
AF: ERDC-CRREL, 72 Lyme Road, Hanover, NH 03755,
AB: Satellite observations indicate a record minimum in Arctic sea ice extent in September 2007, with a particularly large retreat in the East Siberian, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. Insights on the nature of this retreat, and of the summer melt season, can be gleaned from 7 autonomous buoys that were monitoring the thermodynamic mass balance of the ice during the melt season. The buoys were located in the Beaufort Sea and near the North Pole. The total surface ablation over the summer was 0.5 m to 0.7 m at more southern buoys and 0.1 m to 0.3 m for the buoys further north. These values are comparable to observations made in other years. Bottom albation in the Beaufort Sea was extreme, ranging from 0.6 m to 1.2 m. At one site (75 N, 141 W), ice that was 3.2 m thick in May, had completely melted by the end of August, with a 8:5 ratio of bottom to surface melting. There was an anomalously large amount of bottom ablation for this region, requiring an average ocean heat flux of approximately 70 W m-2 from mid-June through August. These observations suggest that the ocean heat flux played a significant role in the dramatic reduction of the 2007 summer sea ice extent in the Beaufort Sea region.
DE: 1218 Mass balance (0762, 1223, 1631, 1836, 1843, 3010, 3322, 4532)
DE: 4540 Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes (0700, 0750, 0752, 0754)
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting