Advances in Iceberg Science

Dear Colleagues,

Icebergs have long been recognized as hazards to ships and offshore infrastructure. Although advances in remote sensing, observations, and numerical modelling have greatly improved our ability to detect and track icebergs, predicting their trajectories and deterioration over extended time scales remains a major challenge. This challenge is particularly important in high-latitude regions, where iceberg motion is influenced by complex interactions among ocean currents, winds, waves, sea ice, bathymetry, and iceberg geometry.

Icebergs also play an important role in the climate system. As they drift and melt, they redistribute freshwater, nutrients, and sediment from glaciers and ice sheets into the ocean, influencing ocean properties, circulation, stratification, sea ice, and marine ecosystems. In a warming climate, changes in glacier and ice-sheet dynamics may alter iceberg calving rates, drift pathways, and meltwater inputs to the polar and subpolar oceans. Understanding how icebergs drift, deteriorate, and interact with the ocean, atmosphere, sea ice, seafloor, and land ice is therefore essential for both operational forecasting and broader assessments of climate change impacts.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances in iceberg science. We welcome contributions addressing the physics of iceberg drift and deterioration, iceberg calving, iceberg interactions with the ocean, atmosphere, sea ice, land ice, and seafloor, and advances in iceberg detection, tracking, forecasting, and modelling.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Iceberg drift patterns in the sub-Arctic, Arctic, and Southern Oceans;
• The influence of iceberg geometry on motion and response to environmental forcing;
• Iceberg deterioration mechanisms and their parameterization in numerical models;
• Iceberg trajectory forecasting and operational applications;
• Iceberg meltwater dispersion and impacts on ocean circulation, stratification, and mixing;
• Icebergs as sources of nutrients, sediments, and freshwater to marine ecosystems;
• Iceberg interactions with sea ice, land ice, the atmosphere, and the ocean;
• Iceberg–seafloor interactions, including scouring and grounding;
• Iceberg calving processes and links to glacier and ice-sheet dynamics;
• Paleoclimate studies involving iceberg discharge, including Heinrich events;
• Remote sensing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications for iceberg detection and tracking;
• In situ observations and measurements of iceberg properties, dynamics, and deterioration
• Advances in numerical modelling of iceberg drift, deterioration, and environmental impacts.

Dr. Juliana M. Marson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• icebergs
• iceberg–ocean interactions
• iceberg drift
• iceberg deterioration
• iceberg calving
• iceberg forecasting
• in-situ observations
• numerical modelling
• remote sensing
• polar oceans