While much attention is given to the summer loss of sea ice, the birth of new ice in the fall is also critical. Ice loss in the summer leaves oceans Keep reading
Tag: sea ice
Disappearing Sea Ice Ridges
As blocks of sea ice shift and float, they can press together, forming ridges spaced every few hundred meters or so. A new study uses aerial observations from recent decades Keep reading
Tracking Ice Floes
To understand why some sea ice melts and other sea ice survives, researchers tracked millions of floes over decades. This herculean undertaking combined satellite data, weather reports, and buoy data Keep reading
Lines of Ice Eddies
In February 2024, the North Atlantic’s sea ice reached its furthest extent of the season, limning the coastline with tens of kilometers of ice. These images — both capturing the Keep reading
Sea Ice Swirls
Fragments of sea ice tumble and swirl in this satellite image of Greenland’s east coast. In spring, Arctic sea ice journeys down the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. Along Keep reading
Waves Break Up Floating Rafts
Small particles can float on a liquid, held together as a raft through capillary action. But those rafts — like the tea skin below — break up when waves jostle Keep reading
Swirling Sea Ice
The Sea of Okhotsk is the northern hemisphere’s southernmost sea that seasonally freezes. Caught between the Siberian coast and the Kamchatka Peninsula, cold air from Siberia helps freeze water kept Keep reading
Mushy Layers
In many geophysical and metallurgical processes, there is a stage with a porous layer of liquid-infused solid known as a mushy layer. Such layers form in sea ice, in cooling Keep reading
Streaks of Sea Ice
As summer approaches in the Southern Ocean, sea ice melts, but the process is not purely one-way. Temperatures in some locations are cold enough for some limited new freezing. The Keep reading
Icy Swirls
Rafts of sea ice follow swirling eddies in this satellite image of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Just as with phytoplankton blooms and sediment, this thin sea ice can be Keep reading