The Arctic sea ice has not only declined over the past decade but has also become distinctly thinner and younger. Researchers are now observing mainly thin, first-year ice floes which are extensively covered with melt ponds in the summer months where once metre-thick, multi-year ice used to float. Sea ice physicists³ at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine⁴ Research (AWI), have now measured the light transmission through the Arctic sea ice for the first time on a large scale, enabling them to quantify consequences of this change. They come to the conclusion that in places where melt water collects on the ice, far more sunlight and therefore energy is able to penetrate⁵ the ice than is the case for white ice without ponds. The consequence is that the ice is absorbing more solar heat, is melting faster, and more light is available for the ecosystems⁶ in and below the ice. The researchers have now published these new findings in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

 

Melt ponds count among the favourite motifs⁷（图案，动机） for ice and landscape photographers in the Arctic. They are captured glistening⁸ in a seductive（有魅力的） Caribbean sea blue or dark as a stormy sea on the ice floe¹. "Their colour depends entirely⁹ on how thick the remaining ice below the melt pond is and the extent to which the dark ocean beneath can be seen through this ice. Melt ponds on thicker ice tend to be turquoise¹⁰（绿松石） and those on thin ice dark blue to black," explains Dr. Marcel Nicolaus, sea ice physicist² and melt pond expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute.

 

In recent years he and his team have observed a strikingly large number of melt ponds during summer expeditions to the central Arctic. Virtually half of the one-year ice was covered with melt ponds. Scientists attribute this observation to climate change. "The ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has been undergoing fundamental change for some years. Thick, multi-year ice is virtually nowhere to be found any more. Instead, more than 50 per cent of the ice cover now consists of thin one-year ice on which the melt water is particularly widespread. The decisive aspect here is the smoother surface of this young ice, permitting the melt water to spread over large areas and form a network of many individual melt ponds," explains Marcel Nicolaus. By contrast, the older ice has a rougher surface which has been formed over the years by the constant motion of the floe and innumerable collisions. Far fewer and smaller ponds formed on this uneven¹¹ surface which were, however, considerably¹² deeper than the flat ponds on the younger ice.

 

The growing number of "windows to the ocean," as melt ponds are also referred to, gave rise to a fundamental research question for Marcel Nicolaus: to what extent do the melt ponds and the thinning ice alter the amount of light beneath the sea ice? After all, the light in the sea -- as on the land -- constitutes the main energy source for photosynthesis¹³（光合作用）. Without sunlight neither algae¹⁴ nor plants grow. Marcel Nicolaus: "We knew that an ice floe with a thick and fresh layer of snow reflects between 85 and 90 per cent of sunlight and permits only little light through to the ocean. In contrast, we could assume that in summer, when the snow on the ice has melted and the sea ice is covered with melt ponds, considerably more light penetrates¹⁵ through the ice."

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