Textural characteristics of sea ice and the major mechanisms of ice growth in the Weddell Sea

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Abstract
We report on studies of sea-ice texture conducted during a number of expeditions into the Weddell Sea. Sea ice in the Antarctic is dominated by granular ice of frazil origin in floes of all ages, in contrast to ice in the Arctic, which consists predominantly of columnar ice of congelation origin. The large fraction of granular ice in first-year sea ice is a result of the dominant ice-formation process in the advancing ice edge, the pancake cycle. The dominance of granular over columnar ice in second- and/or multi-year ice is a result of the large degree of deformational activity in the Southern Ocean.