On the sensitivity of sea ice deformation statistics to plastic damage

Abstract. We implement a plastic damage parametrization, distinct from the elastic damage in the elasto-brittle framework, in the standard viscous–plastic (VP) sea ice model to disentangle its effect from resolved model physics (visco-plastic with and without damage) on its ability to reproduce observed scaling laws of deformation. To this end, we compare scaling properties and multifractality of simulated divergence and shear strain rate, as proposed in the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) studies, with those derived from the RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS). Results show that including a plastic damage parametrization in the standard viscous–plastic model increases the spatial but decreases the temporal localization of simulated linear kinematic features (LKFs) and brings all spatial deformation rate statistics in line with observations from RGPS without the need to increase the mechanical shear strength of sea ice as recently proposed for lower-resolution viscous–plastic sea ice models. In fact, including damage with a healing timescale of th=30 d and an increased mechanical strength unveils multifractal behavior that does not fit the theory. Therefore, a plastic damage parametrization is a powerful tuning knob affecting the deformation statistics of viscous–plastic sea ice.