Sea-ice formation

Sea ice forms from salt water. The presence of salt allows sea ice to remain porous well below the freezing point of pure water, so sea ice is an example of a multiphase system called a mushy layer. Convective fluid flows within the ice are responsible for draining the salt held within sea ice. A fluid-mechanical instability causes focussed flow and the development of brine channels.

My interest in sea ice began during my PhD with Prof. Grae Worster at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge.

I use mushy-layer theory to model the growth and melting of sea ice, convective flows and instabilities. I address questions such as

• How do the physical properties of ice affect its growth rate? (Worster and Rees Jones, 2015)
• How fast does salty brine drain from sea ice? (Rees Jones and Worster, 2013a, Rees Jones and Worster, 2013b)
• How can mushy-layer models be used in a parameterization for large-scale ocean/sea-ice models? (Rees Jones and Worster, 2014, Worster and Rees Jones, 2015)

A copy of my PhD thesis is available here.