Temperature: Seattle
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Temperature: Seattle |
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| The annual cycle of temperature and
mass balance at Seattle, October 1997 to October 1998. The internal ice temperature
is displayed using color contours, with blue being cold (-20 C) and red warm
(0 C). The contours show the propagation of the cold front through the ice in
fall and winter and how the ice warms and becomes isothermal in the summer. The
gray shaded area represents snow depth, which reached a maximum of about 30 cm.
The boundary between red and navy blue denotes the ice-ocean interface and
red-white boundary is the ice-air interface.
In October 1997, Seattle was a freezing melt pond. The snow cover was thick at Seattle with depths ranging from 40-60cm. Because of the freezing pond in the fall and the deep snow in winter and spring ice temperatures at Seattle were warmer than at many of the other sites. Ice thickness at Seattle increased from 0.9 m in October 1997 to only 1.4 m in June 1998. By comparison the initial thickness at Quebec 2 was twice as much as Seattle, yet there was 50% more ice growth at Quebec 2. During summer melt there was 30 cm of surface ablation and 80 cm of bottom ablation. Surface melting was delayed by the heavy snow cover and bottom melting in August was enhanced by Seattle's close proximity to a lead (~25 m from the ice edge). |
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