Dynamics of Brine Inclusions in First Year Sea Ice #

Keith Promislow, Noa Kraitzman, Yuan Chen, Brian Wetton

15:10 Tuesday in 2Q42.

Part of the Sea ice modelling session.

Abstract #

The freezing of salt water engenders phase separation into ice and salt rich brine. The ejection of the salt from the ice phase and its concentration within the liquid is a form of chemotaxis. We present a thermodynamically self-consistent model, built upon the GENRIC framework introduced by Mielke and earlier work of Penrose and Fife. We derive a slow system for the evolution of the brine-ice interface, and present simulations that show that the thermal gradient in sea ice, from the cold top layer to the warmer bottom, induces spherical inclusions to migrate and tubular inclusions to pinch off into smaller spherical ones. The model sits outside the usual family of chemotaxis systems. We outline existence of solutions to a regularized system and preliminary analysis of stability of classes of stationary solutions.