https://www.math.utah.edu/~golden/
Thu, June 17, 2021, 9:00-10:00 am PDT via Zoom
Title: On Thinning Ice: Modeling and monitoring sea ice in a warming climate.
Abstract: Polar sea ice is a key component of Earth’s climate system. As a material it is a composite which is structured on length scales ranging over ten orders of magnitude. A principal challenge in modeling sea ice is how to use information on small scale structure to find the effective or homogenized properties on larger scales relevant to climate models. Moreover, the inverse problem of estimating parameters controlling small scale processes from large scale observations is also of interest. For example, electromagnetic remote sensing of sea ice is central to assessing the impact of climate change. We will discuss recent results on forward and inverse homogenization for sea ice over a broad range of scales. We consider electromagnetic and fluid transport through the brine and polycrystalline microstructure, advection diffusion processes, ocean wave propagation through the ice pack, melt ponds, and the sea ice concentration field over the Arctic Ocean. This work is helping to advance how sea ice is represented in climate models, and to improve projections of the fate of Earth’s sea ice packs and the ecosystems they support.