A High-Resolution Continuous Melter System for Sea Ice and Sediment-Laden Ice Applications

Abstract. Sea ice cores preserve a stratified record of biogeochemical processes that are central to understanding coupled ocean–ice–atmosphere processes. Previously, continuous melter systems were optimized for relatively clean glacial ice and perform poorly on sediment-laden sea ice. Here we present a new high-resolution continuous melter system specifically engineered for sea ice applications. This system combines capabilities of full core processing, inline filtration, and ice depth-resolution control. Further, this configuration allows simultaneous processing of inner and outer meltwater streams, collection of varied grain size fractions, and control for custom user-defined depth resolution during discrete sample collection. Validation experiments using artificial ice cores spanning sea ice densities (~0.7–0.9 g cm⁻³) presented reproducible volume collection, salinity boundaries preservation at sub-centimeter scales, low memory effects (typically <10 %), and high sediment recovery of ~86 % across a 1–106 µm size range. These results show that the new system presented here provides high-resolution discrete sampling of both dissolved and particulate phases, overcoming limitations of existing continuous melter system’s approaches for sediment-rich sea ice cores. With this advancement, new high-resolution analysis for sea ice can be achieved for biogeochemical and paleoclimate reconstructions in polar environments.