Modeling Sea Ice Dynamics in Nares Strait with a Bonded Discrete Element Method
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The Arctic has undergone significant changes in recent decades, with substantial reductions in sea ice extent and multiyear ice, leading to thinner ice that is susceptible to breakup and more mobile. This so-called ``New Arctic" presents additional challenges to the modeling of sea ice dynamics, important to many fields including Earth system models and ice forecasting in maritime operations. As our ability to model sea ice with higher resolutions increases, current modeling techniques that treat the ice as a continuum at all scales will continue to be challenged. Lagrangian particle methods, such as the discrete element method, describe the ice as a granular material which can provide detailed descriptions of sea ice dynamics at higher resolutions. In this talk I will present an overview of modeling sea ice with a bonded discrete element method, discuss our recent efforts modeling sea ice at regional and Arctic spatial scales, and present a few examples with our discrete element model for sea ice (DEMSI) with a focus on modeling ice dynamics in Nares Strait, highlighting the model's ability to capture unique features such as ice arching.
