Data from: Melting dynamics of freely floating ice in calm waters

Published Jan 29, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2v6wwq023

Data files

Jan 29, 2026 version files 5.16 MB

dataset.zip

5.16 MB
README.md

2.95 KB

Abstract

Predicting floating ice dynamics remains a challenging problem with implications for Earth's climate. While gigantic icebergs have garnered worldwide attention, small ice bodies have been overlooked, and we still lack their mechanistic models. Aided by a novel real-time tracking, we unravel the transient processes of freely floating ice in calm waters—including the kinematics, phase transition, and surrounding fluid dynamics—that govern melting. Combining the convective Stefan problem and our experimental results, we develop and validate a theoretical model for the melt rate, identifying ice geometry and convective regime as key controls. Furthermore, the ice-driven convective volume flux is found to exceed the meltwater flux by orders of magnitude, underscoring the ecological relevance of floating ice; it not only supplies freshwater but also acts as a destabilizing buoyancy source that redistributes mass macroscopically. Our study provides a foundation for developing mechanistic parameterizations of icebergs and ice floes melting in climate models.

Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2v6wwq023

Description of the data and file structure

Dataset obtained from laboratory experiments that investigated kinematics and hydrodynamics induced during the melting processes of freely floating ice. This dataset is aimed at reproducing figures used in the article, "Melting dynamics of freely floating ice in calm waters" published in Science Advances (doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ady3529). The laboratory experiments were performed by the authors at Penn GEFLOW Lab (https://web.sas.upenn.edu/geflow-lab/).

Files and variables

File: dataset.zip

Description: A zip file containing ice tracking log, ice interface, velocity fields in waters, and the final result of melting characterization.

"weak/" and "strong/" have exactly the same data structure, and these folder names represent that the former is the dataset for the weakly stratified condition, and the latter is that for the strongly stratified condition.

In the folder "interface/", we have .npz files that store the interface coordinates of floating ice. The key "interface" is a two column arrays that record x and z positions of the interface of the floating ice with the unit of mm. Number in the file name corresponds to the number of triggering sequence.

In the folder "PTV/", we have velocity fields of liquid phase quantified using particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) as .npz format. The keys "xz" and "uw" record the positions and the velocites of the tracer particles in the unit of mm and mm/s, respectively. Number in the file name corresponds to the number of triggering sequence.

The folder "utils/" contains two .csv files: "log_tracking.csv" is the centroid positions of floating ice obtained through the real-time tracking measurement developed in the articke. "melting_process.csv" is the time stamp when the side view for the interface measurements were performed simultaneously with the top view ice tracking measurement.

"data_result.xlsx" is the summary file that contains the experimental condition and the quantified melting time (time for complete melting of ice). The sheet "Condition" summarizes the experimental condition of each experimental run (9 experiments in total): Experimental number (No), Initial Rayleigh number (Ra0), Stefan number (St), Initial time when the ice sphere diameter is equal to 25.4 mm (t0), The time for complete melting (tf), Thermal diffusivity (kappa), Kinematic viscosity (nu), Effective temperature difference in the domain (dT), Effective density difference in the domain (drho). The rest, sheets named "No1" to "No9" correspond to the experimetal condition listed in the sheet "Condition". Each records the ice volume (V) and convective flow rate (Qc) as functions of time (t), where t = 0 corresponds to t0 in the sheet "Condition".