While polar regions are undergoing rapid and unprecedented change, understanding the momentum, heat and salt exchanges in the ice-ocean front is critical to predicting the future state of the sea ice. By providing a measurement platform that is largely unaffected by the surface waves, the drifting sea ice provides a unique laboratory for studying the geophysical boundary layer flows that are difficult to measure elsewhere.

This book is based on both comprehensive observations and theoretical principles to develop a brief description of the impact of stress, rotation, and buoyancy on measures of disturbance that control the exchanges between the atmosphere and the surrounding ocean when sea ice exists. Several interesting and unique observational data sets are used to illustrate the different aspects of ocean ice interaction, ranging from the salt effect to melting in the Greenland ice lagoon, to how nonlinear lines in the equation of the state of sea water affect mixing in the Widal Sea.

The content of the book, developed from a series of lectures, may be an additional material suitable for top-level university students and first-year graduate students who study geophysics of sea ice and planetary layers.