OS Ocean Science OS Ocean Sci. 1812-0792 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/os-3-291-2007 Scaling aspects of the sea-ice-drift dynamics and pack fracture Chmel A. 1 Smirnov V. N. 2 Panov L. V. 2 Fracture Physics Department, Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Bering street, 38, 199397 St. Petersburg, Russia 30 05 2007 3 2 291 298 Copyright: © 2007 A. Chmel et al. 2007 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ This article is available from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/3/291/2007/os-3-291-2007.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/3/291/2007/os-3-291-2007.pdf

A study of the sea-ice dynamics in the periods of time prior to and during the cycles of basin-wide fragmentation of the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is presented. The fractal geometry of the ice-sheets limited by leads and ridges was assessed using the satellite images, while the data on the correlated sea-ice motion were obtained in the research stations "North Pole 32" and "North Pole 33" established on the ice pack. The revealed decrease of the fractal dimension as a result of large-scale fragmentation is consistent with the localization of the fracture process (leads propagation). At the same time, the scaling properties of the distribution of amplitudes of ice-fields accelerations were insensitive to the event of sea-ice fragmentation. The temporal distribution of the accelerations was scale-invariant during "quiet" periods of sea-ice drift but disordered in the period of mechanical perturbation. The period of decorrelated (in time) ice-field motion during the important fracture event was interpreted as an inter-level transition in the hierarchic dynamical system. The mechanism of the long-range correlations in the sea-ice cover, including the fracture process, is suggested to be in relation with the self-organized oscillation dynamics inherent in the ice pack.

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