<h2>Detailed Investigation of the Dynamic Component of Sea Ice Mass Balance</h2>
<p> <strong>Researchers:</strong> Jennifer Hutchings (PI) and Andrew Roberts (Co-PI)<br />
      <strong>Funding Source: </strong>NSF (Bill Wiseman) <br />
      <strong>Collaborators:</strong> </strong>Cathleen Geiger (U. Del.), Jackie Richter-Menge (CRREL), Chandra Khambhamettu (U. Del.), Peter Wadhams (U. Cambridge), Martin Doble (U. Cambridge), Christian Haas (U. Alberta, formally AWI), Rene Forsberg (Danish Space Agency), Henriette Skourup (Danish Space Agency), Ingibjorn Jonsdottir (U. Iceland), Jay Zwally (GSFC NASA), Jeremy Wilkinson (SAMS), Nick Hughes (formally SAMS), Ben Holt (JPL NASA)</p>
<p > The goals of this project are to:</p>
      <ul>
        <li> Improve our understanding of the relationship between sea ice thickness variability and
          sea ice motion variability by investigating stress and strain-rate relations with a comprehensive
          suite of spatiotemporal coincident observations.</li>
        <li> Determine if the viscous-plastic sea ice model, in a configuration used in current and next
          generation climate models, can realistically simulate the impact of ice dynamics on sea ice
          mass balance. </li>
        <li> Determine optimal sets of measurements to monitor pan-arctic sea ice mass balance, utilizing
          model sensitivity studies to determine model uncertainties and identify key monitoring needs.</li>
        <li> We address these objectives with a joint field-remote sensing-modeling campaign, taking
          advantage of the location and season of a U.S. Navy Ice Camp in 2007. Our campaign builds upon
          previous individual efforts, by coordinating modeling, remote sensing and field expertise to
          provide an integrated view of the spatiotemporal variability of sea ice deformation and its
          impact on the sea ice mass balance. By synchronizing an ice thickness measurement campaign
          with deformation measurements, we provide a detailed analysis of the inter-relation between
          sea ice stress, strain rate, and mass balance.</li>
      </ul>
      <p > This project will:</p>
      <ul>
        <li> Characterize the relationship between strain rate and changes in the regional thickness
          distribution. </li>
        <li> Characterize the relationship between, and coherence of, stress and strain rate at 10km
          and 100km. </li>
        <li> Test theoretical relationships between stress, strain rate, and regional thickness distribution. </li>
        <li> Validate models of ice dynamics: How well do they reproduce observed sea ice mass balance
          given known strain rates and/or realistic wind stress fields? </li>
      </ul>
      <p > This project was not funded as a synthesis project. However it is an international collaboration that aims to integrate a variety of data sets to improve our understanding of how sea ice dynamics interact in the sea ice mass balance. We will provide the first inter-comparison of sea ice thickness along track monitoring methods over a variety of spatial scales (1km–1000km). Our ultimate goal is to provide a validation data set for the dynamic component of large-scale sea ice models, which will be applied to Global Climate Models and system models.</p>