Evaluation of the Sea-Ice Simulation in the Upgraded Version of the Coupled Regional Atmosphere-Ocean-Sea Ice Model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0

The sea-ice climatology and sea-ice trends and variability are evaluated in simulations with the new version of the coupled Arctic atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0. This version utilizes upgraded model components for the coupled subsystems, which include physical and numerical improv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmosphere
Main Authors: Dorn, Wolfgang, Rinke, Annette, Köberle, Cornelia, Dethloff, Klaus, Gerdes, Rüdiger
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: MDPI 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/49904/
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/49904/1/Dorn2019.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.0beac178-f2e6-48dd-9a68-349e6b39b69f
Description
Summary:The sea-ice climatology and sea-ice trends and variability are evaluated in simulations with the new version of the coupled Arctic atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model HIRHAM–NAOSIM 2.0. This version utilizes upgraded model components for the coupled subsystems, which include physical and numerical improvements and higher horizontal and vertical resolution, and a revised coupling procedure with the aid of the coupling software YAC (Yet Another Coupler). The model performance is evaluated against observationally based data sets and compared with the previous version. Ensemble simulations for the period 1979–2016 reveal that Arctic sea ice is thicker in all seasons and closer to observations than in the previous version. Wintertime biases in sea-ice extent, upper ocean temperatures, and near-surface air temperatures are reduced, while summertime biases are of similar magnitude as in the previous version. Problematic issues of the current model configuration and potential corrective measures and further developments are discussed.