ABSTRACT: This study addresses a phenomenon that was observed in the 19∼6Winter Weddell Sea Project,. A rapid growth of the ice cover m a wave field was reported. The ice cover in that part of the Marginal Ice Zone of the Southern Ocean was later fund to be formed by the freezing of pancake ice. A model which describe. s the above process has been proposed. This model yields the differential drift caused by the, wave motion and demonstrate: s that floe collisions can be produced by waves. Under ream condition, such collisions can enhance the growth of an IC cover by welding together neighboring pancake ice floes. In this paper, the model is analyzed to study a broad range of wave. and floe parameters.
Introduction It was observed during the 1986 Winter Weddell Sea Project that pancake Ice files were a dominant feature of the ice cover. It was also observed that the average size of an ice floe increased with distance from the ice edge. Near the edge, the ice floes were nearly all circular with raised rims and uniform in size Further inside the ice cover, the floes were seen to be composed of smaller floes that had been welded together. Later in the season after a solid ice sheet had formed, the original pancake ice flow structure was shell Visible due to their raised rims. From aerial photos, the quantum jump in floe size from elementary pancake floes to intermediate composite floes to the largest ice sheet was remarkable. It has been hypothesized that this welding resulted from the interaction of waves and ice, as is, described below. Because of the frequent high winds from storms and nearly unlimited fetch in the Southern Ocean, waves continuously propagate into the Antarctic region.