Results from the implementation of the Elastic Viscous Plastic sea ice rheology in HadCM3

• Published in: Ocean Science
• Main Authors: Connolley, W. M., Keen, A. B., McLaren, A. J.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/os-2-201-2006; https://os.copernicus.org/articles/2/201/2006/

We present results of an implementation of the Elastic Viscous Plastic (EVP) sea ice dynamics scheme into the Hadley Centre coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model HadCM3. Although the large-scale simulation of sea ice in HadCM3 is quite good with this model, the lack of a full dynamical model leads to errors in the detailed representation of sea ice and limits our confidence in its future predictions. We find that introducing the EVP scheme results in a worse initial simulation of the sea ice. This paper documents various enhancements made to improve the simulation, resulting in a sea ice simulation that is better than the original HadCM3 scheme overall. Importantly, it is more physically based and provides a more solid foundation for future development. We then consider the interannual variability of the sea ice in the new model and demonstrate improvements over the HadCM3 simulation.