8:00 AM-8:45 AM
Room: Liberty B&C
Chair: Richard D. James, University of Minnesota, USA
Sea ice is a composite of pure ice with brine and air inclusions. It is distinguished from many other porous media, such as sandstones or bone, in that its microstructure and bulk material properties depend strongly on temperature. Above a critical value of around -5 degrees C, sea ice is permeable, allowing transport of brine, nutrients, biomass, and heat through the ice. In the Antarctic, these processes play an important role in air-sea-ice interactions, in the life cycles of sea ice algae, and in remote sensing of the pack. Recently, the speaker and his colleagues have used percolation theory to model the transition in the transport properties of sea ice. The speaker will give an overview of these results, and how they explain data from Antarctica. He will also describe recent work in developing inverse algorithms for recovering the physical properties of sea ice via electromagnetic remote sensing, and how percolation processes come into play. At the conclusion, the speaker will show a short video on a recent winter expedition into the Antarctic sea ice pack.
Kenneth M. Golden