Ice Formation in Leads
Once a crack occurs within the ice cover and begins to expand to make up a lead, the open water inside the lead is exposed to the cold air temperatures and will freeze. Because wind fetch inside a lead is typically very short, wave action is considerably reduced. Ice growth therefore takes place in a low energy regime environment. Following a stage of frazil ice formation, which sometimes results from seeding by snow crystals, the resulting thin ice skim is followed by the growth of congelation ice. In windier regions, as in the Southern Ocean, frazil ice accumulation may occur along the downwind side of leads. If the ice on that side is thin, the frazil may be driven below that ice (resulting in a complex interlayering pattern). Leads have an impact on global water circulation. As ice begins to form inside a lead, it incorporates some of the salt in the seawater (which is why sea ice is saline) but rejects most of it. This brine then sinks, inducing convective processes in the water column below.
Read more about this topic: Lead (sea Ice)
Famous quotes containing the words ice, formation and/or leads:
“When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain! The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The formation of an oppositional world view is necessary for feminist struggle. This means that the world we have most intimately known, the world in which we feel “safe” ... must be radically changed. Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses.”
—Bell (c. 1955)
“To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)