Melting of Ice and Sea Ice into Seawater and Frazil Ice Formation

The thermodynamic consequences of the melting of ice and sea ice into seawater are considered. The International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater—2010 (TEOS-10) is used to derive the changes in the Conservative Temperature and Absolute Salinity of seawater that occurs as a consequence of the melting of ice and sea ice into seawater. Also, a study of the thermodynamic relationships involved in the formation of frazil ice enables the calculation of the magnitudes of the Conservative Temperature and Absolute Salinity changes with pressure when frazil ice is present in a seawater parcel, assuming that the frazil ice crystals are sufficiently small that their relative vertical velocity can be ignored. The main results of this paper are the equations that describe the changes to these quantities when ice and seawater interact, and these equations can be evaluated using computer software that the authors have developed and is publicly available in the Gibbs SeaWater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox of TEOS-10.