Abstract
A recent, substantial reduction in summer Arctic sea
ice extent and its potential ecological and geopolitical
impacts generated a lot of attention in the media and
among the general public. The satellite remote-sensing
data documenting such recent changes in ice coverage
are collected at coarse spatial scales (Chapter 9) and
typically cannot resolve details finer than about 10km
in lateral extent. However, many of the processes that
make sea ice such an important aspect of the polar
oceans occur at much smaller scales, ranging from the
sub-millimetre to the metre scale. An understanding
of how large-scale behaviour of sea ice monitored by
satellite relates to and depends on the processes driving
ice growth and decay requires an understanding of the
evolution of ice structure and properties at these finer
scales and this is the subject of this chapter.
ice extent and its potential ecological and geopolitical
impacts generated a lot of attention in the media and
among the general public. The satellite remote-sensing
data documenting such recent changes in ice coverage
are collected at coarse spatial scales (Chapter 9) and
typically cannot resolve details finer than about 10km
in lateral extent. However, many of the processes that
make sea ice such an important aspect of the polar
oceans occur at much smaller scales, ranging from the
sub-millimetre to the metre scale. An understanding
of how large-scale behaviour of sea ice monitored by
satellite relates to and depends on the processes driving
ice growth and decay requires an understanding of the
evolution of ice structure and properties at these finer
scales and this is the subject of this chapter.