  Chen et al. (Eur. J. Mech. B/Fluids 78, pp. 88-105, 2019) recently proposed a
two-dimensional continuum model for linear gravity waves propagating in
ice-covered seas. It is based on a two-layer formulation where the ice cover is
viewed as a porous viscoelastic medium. In the present paper, extensive tests
against both laboratory experiments and field observations are performed to
assess this model's ability at describing wave attenuation in various types of
sea ice. The theoretical predictions are fitted to data on attenuation rate via
error minimization and numerical solution of the corresponding dispersion
relation. Detailed comparison with other existing viscoelastic theories is also
presented. Estimates for effective rheological parameters such as shear modulus
and kinematic viscosity are obtained from the fits and are found to vary
significantly among the models. For this poroelastic system, the range of
estimated values turns out to be relatively narrow in orders of magnitude over
all the cases considered. Against field measurements from the Arctic Ocean,
this model is able to reasonably reproduce the roll-over of attenuation rate as
a function of frequency. Given the rather large number of physical parameters
in such a formulation, a sensitivity analysis is also conducted to gauge the
relevance of a representative set of them to the attenuation process.
