"This animation created by François Massonnet, "depicts one annual cycle of the Arctic sea ice, as modelled by the numerical ocean--sea ice model NEMO3.6-LIM3 used in APPLICATE. The background field is sea ice thickness, expressed in meters. The black dots are drifting virtual buoys. These buoys are evenly spread on sea ice on the first day of the simulation and then are transported according to sea ice motion. This visualization helps to understand two main types of processes that shape the sea ice evolution on time scales of days to months, and hence its predictability on such time scales. Thermodynamic processes, on the one hand, control the wax (increase) and wane (decrease) of sea ice. Advective processes (the transfer of heat or matter by the flow of a fluid), on the other hand, act to transport sea ice from one region to another according to winds and currents. Large-scale sea ice thickness anomalies can therefore be predicted if knowledge about anomalous thermal and dynamical forcing can be anticipated."

Source: François Massonnet