Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models
Melt ponds appear during the Arctic summer on the sea ice cover when meltwater and liquid precipitation collect in the depressions of the ice surface. The albedo of the melt ponds is lower than that of surrounding ice and snow areas. Consequently, the melt ponds are an important factor for the ice-a...
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ftdatacite:10.5281/zenodo.4545569 2023-05-15T13:11:01+02:00 Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models Sterlin, Jean Fichefet, Thierry Massonnet, François Lecomte, Olivier Vancoppenolle, Martin 2020 https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545569 https://zenodo.org/record/4545569 en eng Zenodo https://zenodo.org/communities/applicate https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545568 https://zenodo.org/communities/applicate Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC-BY Melt ponds Albedo Sea ice models Arctic climate Text Presentation article-journal ScholarlyArticle 2020 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545569 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545568 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Melt ponds appear during the Arctic summer on the sea ice cover when meltwater and liquid precipitation collect in the depressions of the ice surface. The albedo of the melt ponds is lower than that of surrounding ice and snow areas. Consequently, the melt ponds are an important factor for the ice-albedo feedback, a mechanism whereby a decrease in albedo results in greater absorption of solar radiation, further ice melt, and lower albedo To account for the effect of melt ponds on the climate, several numerical schemes have been introduced for Global Circulation Models. They can be classified into two groups. The first group makes use of an explicit relation to define the aspect ratio of the melt ponds. The scheme of Holland et al. (2012) uses a constant ratio of the melt pond depth to the fraction of sea ice covered by melt ponds. The second group relies on theoretical considerations to deduce the area and volume of the melt ponds. The scheme of Flocco et al. (2012) uses the ice thickness distribution to share the meltwater between the ice categories and determine the melt ponds characteristics. Despite their complexity, current melt pond schemes fail to agree on the trends in melt pond fraction of sea ice area during the last decades. The disagreement casts doubts on the projected melt pond changes. It also raises questions on the definition of the physical processes governing the melt ponds in the schemes and their sensitivity to atmospheric surface conditions. In this study, we aim at identifying 1) the conceptual difference of the aspect ratio definition in melt pond schemes; 2) the role of refreezing for melt ponds; 3) the impact of the uncertainties in the atmospheric reanalyses. To address these points, we have run the Louvain-la-Neuve Ice Model (LIM), part of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) version 3.6 along with two different atmospheric reanalyses as surface forcing sets. We used the reanalyses in association with Holland et al. (2012) and Flocco et al. (2012) melt pond schemes. We selected Holland et al. (2012) pond refreezing formulation for both schemes and tested two different threshold temperatures for refreezing. From the experiments, we describe the impact on Arctic sea ice and state the importance of including melt ponds in climate models. We attempt at disentangling the separate effects of the type of melt pond scheme, the refreezing mechanism, and the atmospheric surface forcing method, on the climate. We finally formulate a recommendation on the use of melt ponds in climate models. Conference Object albedo Arctic Sea ice DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Melt ponds Albedo Sea ice models Arctic climate |
spellingShingle |
Melt ponds Albedo Sea ice models Arctic climate Sterlin, Jean Fichefet, Thierry Massonnet, François Lecomte, Olivier Vancoppenolle, Martin Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
topic_facet |
Melt ponds Albedo Sea ice models Arctic climate |
description |
Melt ponds appear during the Arctic summer on the sea ice cover when meltwater and liquid precipitation collect in the depressions of the ice surface. The albedo of the melt ponds is lower than that of surrounding ice and snow areas. Consequently, the melt ponds are an important factor for the ice-albedo feedback, a mechanism whereby a decrease in albedo results in greater absorption of solar radiation, further ice melt, and lower albedo To account for the effect of melt ponds on the climate, several numerical schemes have been introduced for Global Circulation Models. They can be classified into two groups. The first group makes use of an explicit relation to define the aspect ratio of the melt ponds. The scheme of Holland et al. (2012) uses a constant ratio of the melt pond depth to the fraction of sea ice covered by melt ponds. The second group relies on theoretical considerations to deduce the area and volume of the melt ponds. The scheme of Flocco et al. (2012) uses the ice thickness distribution to share the meltwater between the ice categories and determine the melt ponds characteristics. Despite their complexity, current melt pond schemes fail to agree on the trends in melt pond fraction of sea ice area during the last decades. The disagreement casts doubts on the projected melt pond changes. It also raises questions on the definition of the physical processes governing the melt ponds in the schemes and their sensitivity to atmospheric surface conditions. In this study, we aim at identifying 1) the conceptual difference of the aspect ratio definition in melt pond schemes; 2) the role of refreezing for melt ponds; 3) the impact of the uncertainties in the atmospheric reanalyses. To address these points, we have run the Louvain-la-Neuve Ice Model (LIM), part of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) version 3.6 along with two different atmospheric reanalyses as surface forcing sets. We used the reanalyses in association with Holland et al. (2012) and Flocco et al. (2012) melt pond schemes. We selected Holland et al. (2012) pond refreezing formulation for both schemes and tested two different threshold temperatures for refreezing. From the experiments, we describe the impact on Arctic sea ice and state the importance of including melt ponds in climate models. We attempt at disentangling the separate effects of the type of melt pond scheme, the refreezing mechanism, and the atmospheric surface forcing method, on the climate. We finally formulate a recommendation on the use of melt ponds in climate models. |
format |
Conference Object |
author |
Sterlin, Jean Fichefet, Thierry Massonnet, François Lecomte, Olivier Vancoppenolle, Martin |
author_facet |
Sterlin, Jean Fichefet, Thierry Massonnet, François Lecomte, Olivier Vancoppenolle, Martin |
author_sort |
Sterlin, Jean |
title |
Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
title_short |
Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
title_full |
Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
title_fullStr |
Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
title_full_unstemmed |
Modeling melt ponds in Global Circulation Models |
title_sort |
modeling melt ponds in global circulation models |
publisher |
Zenodo |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545569 https://zenodo.org/record/4545569 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
genre_facet |
albedo Arctic Sea ice |
op_relation |
https://zenodo.org/communities/applicate https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545568 https://zenodo.org/communities/applicate |
op_rights |
Open Access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545569 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4545568 |
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1766245636555931648 |