Ice Thickness and Deformation in the 2018 Greenland Polynya - How much did deformation contribute to sea ice thickness change in the North Greenland Polynya?

In February and March 2018 a unique polynya of open water had opened in the Wandel Sea north of Greenland due to unusually strong southerly winds. The polynya subsequently refroze and the area of the growing young ice strongly decreased by ice convergence due to northerly winds, constituting a natural, well-constrained, full-scale ice deformation experiment. We have carried out an airborne electromagnetic ice thickness survey of the young ice one month after the polynya began to close. It showed a thickness distribution with a modal ice thickness of 1 m and mean thickness of 2 m, representative of the contributions of thermodynamic and dynamic growth in the one month since the ice had begun to grow. We used time series of Sentinel 1 SAR images to back-track the surveyed young ice to its location of initial formation. Results showed that the area of young ice approximately halved between the time of its formation and the time of the ice thickness survey. This is in good qualitative agreement with the result of the thickness survey, showing that its mean thickness was twice its modal thickness, i.e. mean ice thickness doubled while the region's area halved. These results and the SAR observed deformation processes provide valuable information for improving representation of ice rheology and thickness redistribution in sea ice models