The development of a coupled ice‐ocean model for forecasting ice conditions in the Arctic

A coupled ice-ocean model has been developed to investigate how a better simulation of ice-ocean interaction can improve sea ice forecasting capabilities. The coupling of the ice and ocean results in improved temporal variability of ocean circulation and heat and salt exchange between ice and ocean. The U.S. Navy's Polar Ice Prediction System is coupled to a diagnostic version of the Bryan-Cox three-dimensional ocean circulation model. A horizontal grid spacing of 127 km was used in the coupled model with 17 vertical levels from the surface to the ocean bottom. Atmospheric data from the Naval Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) for 1986 were used to force the model. The ice-ocean model simulation yielded realistic ice thickness distributions, ice drifts, and ocean currents. The model predicted accurate seasonal trends in ice growth and decay. Excess ice is often grown in the Greenland and Barents seas in fall and winter. This is due, in part, to the model's grid resolution which does not accurately resolve narrow currents, such as the West Spitsbergen Current. A sensitivity study of the heat transfer coefficients used in the ice model showed that the ice edge could be improved by using different coefficient values for thick ice, thin ice, and open water. Other sensitivity studies examined the effect of removing the “distorted” physics frequently used in the Bryan-Cox ocean circulation model and the effect of the vertical eddy momentum coefficient on the surface ocean circulation. An additional simulation was made using 1989 NOGAPS forcing to examine what type of variability could occur when using different years of NOGAPS forcing in the diagnostic ocean model. Significant differences occurred between the 1989 and 1986 ice thickness distributions as well as the oceanic heat fluxes. These differences show that the forecast system, which presently uses an ocean “climatology,” can benefit from the variability allowed by the diagnostic ocean model.

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