Sea Ice Growth, Melt, and Modeling: A Survey

The freshwater budget of the Arctic as a whole can be stated quite simply as: inflows minus outflows equals net change within the region. If the region is defined to include all ice-covered seas, then the growth and melt of sea ice is an internal term that has no net effect. This is illustrated schematically for the ice-ocean system in Figure 1 where net ice growth in the Arctic Ocean is balanced by net ice melt in the Greenland-IcelandNorwegian (GIN) Seas.