Journal article

Validity of the wave stationarity assumption on estimates of wave attenuation in sea ice: Toward a method for wave-ice attenuation observations at global scales

JJ Voermans, X Xu, AV Babanin

Journal of Glaciology | Cambridge University Press | Published : 2023

Abstract

In situ observations of wave attenuation by sea ice are required to develop and validate wave-ice interaction parameterizations in coupled wave models. To estimate ice-induced wave attenuation in the field, the wave field is typically assumed to be stationary. In this study we investigate the validity of this assumption by creating a synthetic wave field in sea ice for different attenuation rates. We observe that errors in estimates of the wave attenuation rates are largest when attenuation rates are small or temporal averaging periods are short. Moreover, the adoption of the wave stationarity assumption can lead to negative estimates of the instantaneous wave attenuation rate. These apparen..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Office of Naval Research


Funding Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements We acknowledge Sofar Ocean Technologies for the wave buoy deployment and providing wave buoy data, and the Copernicus Climate Change Service at ECMWF for making the ERA5 reanalysis data available. JJV and AVB acknowledge support from the Australian Antarctic Program under project 4593. AVB acknowledges support from the US Office of Naval Research (grant N62909-20-1-2080). The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which significantly improved this manuscript.