Author(s): Peng Lu; Zhijun Li; Bin Cheng; Matti Lepparanta
Linked Author(s): Matti Leppäranta, Peng Lu
Keywords: No keywords
Abstract: Melt ponds are important and inevitable issue as dealing with the dramatic decay of current Arctic sea ice. The melt pond properties and its effect on Arctic sea ice mass balance has been studied extensively in recent years. However, there are still some shortcomings in the studies. For example, the pond albedo is still associated with pond depth according to field observations many years ago. Pond color is never examined and only treated as an additional feature of meltwater on ice surface. And partitioning of solar energy in melting sea ice is still difficult to measure in summer Arctic. In this study, a radiative transfer model was adopted to investigate the optics of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice, including issues mentioned above. The results show that the present model has the capability to model the optics of melt ponds on Arctic sea ice, which produced comparable results with previous data on the melt-pond albedo and color. It can be also implemented into sea-ice thermodynamic models to improve our understanding of the effect of melt ponds on surface heat budget and mass balance. More validation data are still necessary to compare with the modelling results.
Year: 2018