Sea Ice Sensitivities in the 0.72 degrees and 0.08 degrees Arctic Cap Coupled HYCOM/CICE Models

• Main Author: McClean, Julie L
• Other Authors: SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY LA JOLLA CA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Snow; Ice and Permafrost; *SEA ICE; ARCTIC OCEAN; CONCENTRATION(COMPOSITION); COUPLING(INTERACTION); ICE FORECASTING; MODELS; PREDICTIONS; SUMMER; THICKNESS; ARCTIC ICE; ATMOSPHERIC FORCING; HYCOM(HYBRID COORDINATE OCEAN MODEL); ICE FIELDS; ICE PROCESSES; SEA ICE EXTENT; SENSITIVITY TESTING; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Lanes; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA601136; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA601136

Perennial Arctic ice extent, which corresponds to the sea ice that remains during the summer minimum, has decreased over the years 1979 2007 by more than 10% per decade (Comiso et al., 2008). The decline has been faster over recent years, leading to very low ice concentration in the summers of 2007 and 2008 (Goosse et al. 2009) with the lowest observed sea ice extent in the satellite record (1979-present) occurring in September 2012 (Perovich et al. 2012). Further reduction in perennial ice extent will likely lead to the inception of new shipping lanes through the Arctic bringing both opportunities for commerce and the need for heightened defense scrutiny. Prediction of future Arctic sea ice conditions, on both short and longer-term time scales are dependent on the capability of the component models in integrated Arctic and global models. The long-term goal of this project, therefore, is to improve the performance of the sea-ice model used in the Navy's coupled ocean and sea-ice prediction systems. These models consist of the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) CICE model. The objectives of the project are to optimize the depiction of ice processes in existing Navy Research Laboratory (NRL) configurations of coupled HYCOM/CICE using sensitivity testing, and together with NRL implement and test new versions of CICE in these coupled model set-ups as they become available from the LANL developers.