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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Physical Oceanography
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1497808
This article is part of the Research Topic Prediction Models and Disaster Assessment of Ocean Waves, and the Coupling Effects of Ocean Waves in Various Ocean-Air Processes View all 5 articles

Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Sea Ice Effects on Internal Solitary Waves

Provisionally accepted
Jin Tan Jin Tan *
  • Saint Pauls Girls School, London, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Internal solitary waves in polar regions attract much interest recently. It is important to understand how sea ice affects them, as that may have a profound influence on human activities and environment. In this study, experiments on internal solitary waves and two types of sea ice (ice sheet and ice keel) are presented. After showing that the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation is more suitable than the Benjamin-Ono (BO) equation for simulating the waves studied, this paper presents corresponding simulations using the variable-coefficient Korteweg-de Vries (vKdV) equation, a derivation of the KdV equation. The sharp vertices of the ice result in occasional inconsistency with the vKdV predictions. Nonetheless, the vKdV equation is still suitable for modelling such waves under sea ice, giving generally accurate results that are adequate to assist further studies. Both experiments and simulations provide evidence for wave deformation, oscillation occurring in the rear of the wave, and decrease in amplitude. The latter suggests possibilities of energy dissipation or emission of small amplitude linear waves. This is for the first time that the vKdV equation is applied to investigate the impacts of sea ice on internal solitary waves.

    Keywords: Internal solitary waves, sea ice, wave amplitude, wave shape, Dye experiment, KdV equation, vKdV equation

    Received: 17 Sep 2024; Accepted: 14 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jin Tan, Saint Pauls Girls School, London, United Kingdom

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