Physically Consistent Eddy-resolving State Estimation and Prediction of the Coupled Pan-Arctic Climate System at Daily to Interannual Time Scales Using the Regional Arctic Climate Model (RACM)

• Main Authors: Maslowski, Wieslaw, Roberts, Andrew, Cassano, John, Hughes, Mimi
• Other Authors: NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Meteorology; Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Snow; Ice and Permafrost; Statistics and Probability; Computer Programming and Software; *ARCTIC REGIONS; *CLIMATE CHANGE; *COMPUTER PROGRAMS; *PREDICTIONS; ALGORITHMS; EDDIES(FLUID MECHANICS); ESTIMATES; MODELS; SEA ICE; SURFACE TEMPERATURE; THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY; THICKNESS; TIDES; VOLUME; *RACM(REGIONAL ARCTIC CLIMATE MODEL); RGCM(REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CLIMATE MODELING); RASM(REGIONAL ARCTIC SYSTEM MODEL); SEA ICE THICKNESS; Arctic; Climate change; Ice; permafrost; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA601279; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA601279

The overall science goal of this project is to address the short to long-term US Navy / DOD (Arctic Roadmap, 2009) and national requirements (Roberts et al., 2010) to understand and predict arctic climate change. The proposed research leverages ongoing developments of the state-of-the-art Regional Arctic Climate Model (RACM) through a multi-institutional program supported by the Department of Energy Regional and Global Climate Modeling (DOE/RGCM) program and two ongoing complementary projects. This new project, which started in January 2012, is aimed at improved modeling of the atmosphere-ice-ocean interface in the presence of tides and eddies to advance representation of the past and present state of the Arctic Climate System and prediction of its future states at time scales from daily (operational) through seasonal, interannual, and up to decadal (tactical). Three main objectives are to (i) advance understanding and model representation of critical physical processes and feedbacks of importance to sea ice thickness and area distribution using a combination of forward modeling and state estimation techniques, (ii) investigate the relation between the upper ocean heat content and sea ice volume change and its potential feedback in amplifying ice melt, (iii) upgrade RACM with the above improvements to advance both operational and tactical prediction of arctic climate using a single model. Prepared in collaboration with CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder, and NOAA/ESRL/PSD R/PSD2, Boulder, CO.