On Wind-Induced Cracking Of Sea-Ice Sheets

Ice sheets and sea level.

Ice sheets and sea level of the Last Glacial Maximum

This paper outlines the general issues regarding ice sheets and sea level of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which formed the basis of an EPILOG Project workshop. Papers in this special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews provide a comprehensive assessment of these issues from the perspective of geological reconstructions of ice sheet extent, records of sea-level change, ice sheet modelling, ge...

Surface roughness characterizations of sea ice and ice sheets: case studies with MISR data

This work is an examination of potential uses of multiangular remote sensing imagery for mapping and characterizing sea ice and ice sheet surfaces based on surface roughness properties. We use data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) to demonstrate that ice sheet and sea ice surfaces have characteristic angular signatures and that these angular signatures may be used in much t...

The future of ice sheets and sea ice: between reversible retreat and unstoppable loss.

We discuss the existence of cryospheric "tipping points" in the Earth's climate system. Such critical thresholds have been suggested to exist for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice and the retreat of ice sheets: Once these ice masses have shrunk below an anticipated critical extent, the ice-albedo feedback might lead to the irreversible and unstoppable loss of the remaining ice. We here give a...

Cracking sheets: oscillatory fracture paths in thin elastic sheets.

When a blunt cutting tool is forced through a thin elastic sheet that is held along its lateral boundaries, a strikingly regular wavy cut can be left behind, examples of which are presented in Fig. 1. The thin film is brittle, hence it undergoes negligible irreversible deformation besides fracture. For tools much wider than the film’s thickness, the crack tip follows a highly reproducible nonsi...