Sea-ice dynamics  
Aerial view
 of a sea-ice pack in the Antarctic Sea ice is an important component of the global climate system providing a dynamic and thermodynamic coupling between the polar oceans and the lower atmosphere. Typically the ice is between 1 to 5 metres thick, covers up to 15 million square kilometres and drifts up to 15 km per day in response to the wind and ocean currents. The ice pack is made up of millions of ice floes that form the grains of a very large scale two-dimensional granular material. I am interested in improving the modelling of both the dynamics and thermodynamics of the ice pack, for climate models and shorter term shipping forecasts.

Publications

Gray, J.M.N.T. & Morland, L.W. (1994). A two-dimensional model for the dynamics of sea ice. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 347 , 219-290.

Gray, J.M.N.T. & Killworth, P.D. (1995). Stability of the viscous plastic sea ice rheology. J. Phys. Ocean. 25(5), 971-978.

Gray, J.M.N.T. & Killworth, P.D. (1996). Sea ice ridging schemes. J. Phys. Ocean. 26(11), 2420-2428.

Gray, J.M.N.T. (1999). Loss of hyperbolicity and ill-posedness of the viscous-plastic sea ice rheology in uniaxial divergent flow. J. Phys. Ocean. 29(11), 2920-2929.



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Page last modified: December 22, 2000