Temperature and geographical dependence of the compressive and flexural strength of first-year sea ice

A modified relationship for the temperature dependence of the compressive strength of first-year sea ice, which included an additional Arrhenius term for temperature as well as the usual porosity term, was tested against all available data. The scatter was so large that no conclusion could be reached regarding the usefulness of this additional term. When individual workers' results were used the scatter was reduced and in one case the modified relationship was a significantly better fit to the data than the original. The geographical distribution of the compressive and flexural strengths of first-year sea ice was investigated for three regions; Arctic, Antarctic and Baltic. There was significan scatter in the data, and a lack of flexural strength data for the Baltic. Within this scatter, the only differences between the regions observed could be attributed to temperature at the time of the measurement.NRC publication: Ye