The Cryosphere

Sea Ice and Southern Ocean Processes

Principal Investigator: Tim Haskell
Organisation: Industrial Research Ltd

This programme has three complementary and intersecting objectives:

1. Thermal properties and growth processes in sea ice, which focuses on aspects of sea ice that determine how it controls the relationship between the ocean beneath and the atmosphere above.

2. Ocean wave / sea ice linkages relevant to climate, where the aim is to determine how the sea ice interacts with the sea borne wave field, especially in areas of spatial variability and abrupt transitions.

3. Southern Ross Sea oceanography, which focuses on circulation in Antarctic fjords, turbulence under the sea ice and internal waves in McMurdo Sound. Conventional and novel techniques include NMR, thermal and optical characterisation, electrical resistance and modelling of wave propagation in heterogeneous media.

Recent Publications:

Langhorne, P.J. et al. Lifetime estimation for a fast ice sheet subjected to ocean swell. Annals of Glaciology 33: 333-338, 2001.

Smith I.J. Langhorne, P.J. Haskell, T.G. Trodahl, H.J. Frew, R. Vennell, M.R. Platelet ice and the land-fast sea ice of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Annals of glaciology 33: 21-27, 2001.

Trodahl, H.J. Wilkinson, S.O.F. McGuinness, M.J. Haskell, T.J. Thermal conductivity of sea ice: dependence on temperature and depth. Geophysical research letters 28: 1279-1282, 2001.