Sea ice is a two-phase, two-component, reactive porous medium: an example of what is known in other contexts as a mushy layer. The fundamental conservation laws underlying the mathematical description of mushy layers provide a robust foundation for the prediction of sea-ice evolution. Here we show that the general equations describing mushy layers reduce to the model of Maykut and Untersteiner (1971) under the same approximations employed therein.
Sea ice is a mushy layer
Peer Reviewed
Geophysical Research Letters 33, Issue 14, pages L14501, 2006, 10.1029/2006GL026290.