Well-posedness of Hibler's dynamical sea-ice model

Abstract

This paper establishes the local-in-time well-posedness of solutions to an approximating system constructed by mildly regularizing the dynamical sea-ice model of W.D. Hibler, Journal of Physical Oceanog- raphy, 1979. Our choice of regularization has been carefully designed, prompted by physical considerations, to retain the original coupled hyperbolic-parabolic character of Hibler’s model. Various regularized versions of this model have been used widely for the numerical simula- tion of the circulation and thickness of the Arctic ice cover. However, due to the singularity in the ice rheology, the notion of solutions to the original model is unclear. Instead, an approximating system, which captures current numerical study, is proposed. The well-posedness theory of such a system provides a first-step groundwork in both nu- merical study and future analytical study.