I am interested in atmosphere-ocean interactions and feedbacks in the polar regions; for example in the marginal-ice-zone and in polynyas and leads. Polynyas are areas of persistent open water within the sea ice pack, caused by systematic wind stress or oceanic warming. Leads are linear cracks in the sea ice pack, caused by wind stress or tidal divergence. The air-sea-ice interactions that occur in the MIZ, over the continental shelves, are important for modifying the properties of the ocean, and thus are a key component of the ocean's thermohaline circulation. I have made some gif movies: in four images over consecutive days, one can see the opening of a coastal polynya along the Ronne Ice Shelf due to strong offshore winds blowing the sea ice pack offshore. Try the AVHRR , the specially enhanced passive microwave PSSM images , and the mean sea level pressure maps from the NCEP reanalysis (showing the rapid deepening of a low pressure system). Longer PSSM movies of July 1998 and the anomalous break out of sea ice in November and December 1997 are also interesting.
Recent work in this areas includes:
Renfrew, I. A., J. C. King, and T. Markus, 2002:
Coastal polynyas in the southern Weddell Sea:
Variability in the surface energy budget
J. Geophys. Res. (Oceans) , 107(C6), 3063, doi:10.1029/2000JC000720.
Please download a
reprint, or contact me for a
proper reprint.
Note that AGU messed up their paper referencing when they switched to doi -
you need to include the 4 digit (3063) number which is not on the pdf, or the
reprints. I'd recommend a proper reprint as the figures look great.
If you'd like better quality figures than in the final pdf file
you can download the figures
here.
Moore, G. W. K., K. Alverson and I. A. Renfrew, 2002:
A reconstruction of the air-sea interaction
associated with the Weddell Polynya,
J. Phys. Oceanogr, 32, 1685-1698.
Please download a
reprint, or contact Kent
or myself for one.
Renfrew, I. A. and J. C. King, 2000:
A simple model of the convective internal boundary layer and its
application to surface heat flux estimates within polynyas,
Boundary-Layer Meteorol., 94, 335-356.
Please contact me for a reprint.
Here is the abstract .
I have made the Matlab code for the boundary-layer model available to download from here . Please reference our paper if you use the model and let me know if you find it useful, it would be great if you do!
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