Sea ice flower

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Sea ice flowers on young ice in the Arctic .

Sea ice flowers are ice crystals a few centimeters in size that arise in the Arctic and Antarctic in spring and autumn .

Origin and Mechanisms

Sea ice flowers are formed when winds tear the surface of the ice and the now open water begins to freeze over again. A concentrated brine is created on the surface. In this ice crystals form, the sea ice flowers (English frost flowers ). They then absorb the concentrated salts through capillary action , so that they have a high salt concentration.

These salts also contain bromine compounds , which lead to a radical breakdown of the near-surface ozone . This process takes place in so-called bromine explosions .

See also

literature

  • S. Martin, R. Drucker, M. Fort: A laboratory study of frost flower growth on the surface of young sea ice. In: J. Geophys. Res. 100 (C4), 1995, pp. 7027-7036, doi : 10.1029 / 94JC03243 .
  • S. Martin, Y. Yu, R. Drucker: The temperature dependence of frost flower growth on laboratory sea ice and the effect of the flowers on infrared observations of the surface. In: J. Geophys. Res. 101 (C5), 1996, pp. 12111-12125, doi : 10.1029 / 96JC00208 .
  • RW Style, MG Worster: Frost flower formation on sea ice and lake ice. In: Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, 2009, L11501, doi : 10.1029 / 2009GL037304 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In particular: L. Kaleschke, et al .:, Frost flowers on sea ice as a source of sea salt and their influence on tropospheric halogen chemistry. In: Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, 2004, L16114, doi : 10.1029 / 2004GL020655 .
  2. ↑ On this, for example: AM Rankin, EW Wolff, S. Martin: Frost flowers: Implications for tropospheric chemistry and ice core interpretation In: J. Geophys. Res. 107 (D23), 2002, p. 4683, doi : 10.1029 / 2002JD002492 .