Modeling the formation of wind-driven coastal polynyas

Polynyas are persistent, recurrent regions of open sea water surrounded by sea ice and/or land in the polar zones. We conduct a combined theoretical and numerical study on the dynamics and thermodynamics of the formation of a wind-driven latent-heat polynya near a coastline with and without curvature. In the limit of weak ice internal pressure, we propose a one-dimensional, continuous, mass- and momentum-conserving theory characterizing the offshore distribution of the ice velocity and the spatial-temporal evolution of the ice concentration. Using an open-source solver based on finite-element method, we simulate this process considering the rheological properties of the ice. The theoretical and numerical results agree well with each other in most cases, and the obtained steady-state polynya width qualitatively matches the corresponding climate data.