Sediment-Laden Sea Ice in the Eurasian Arctic: Sediment Sources, Ice Floe Development, and Its Impact on Climate

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Observations in 1987-1989 of Eurasian Arctic sea ice with high sediment content raise questions of consequences for ice melting, ice modeling, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. During 1990 and 1991 it is proposed to investigate sediment transport by sea ice by identifying the sources of the sediment, examining the development of sediment-laden floes and assessing the climatic impact of sediment inclusions in sea ice. The sediment sources will be identified by comparing existing sediment samples from western Eurasian Arctic sea ice floes to analyses of sea floor sediment from the Siberian Seas. Sediment incorporation by river discharge during spring breakup, and aeolian transport by costal dust storms will be assessed based on LANDSAT imagery of the Siberian shelf seas. In addition, the history and development of sediment-laden multi-year floes will be deciphered. The potential climatic impact of sediment-laden sea ice within the context of varying environmental scenarios will be estimated using a coupled energy balance climatic-sea ice model, which incorporates a modified version of the parameterization of the effect of "dirty" inclusions on snow and ice albedo used in Ledley and Thompson (1986).