Simulating the Southern Ocean with a physical-biogeochemical model

• Main Authors: Äijälä, C., Uotila, P., Kari Lauvset, S., De Falco, C., Gutierrez Loza, L.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; Ice Shelf; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5016537

We present a regional ocean model for an Antarctic circumpolar quarter-degree domain. The model uses ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System), with ocean-ice shelf thermodynamics parametrisation and BEC (Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling model) biogeochemistry for the ocean and CICE6.1.3 (Community Ice CodE) for the sea-ice. The models are coupled with MCT (The Model Coupling Toolkit). We show analysis of hindcast runs with ERA5 (ECMWF Reanalysis v5) and ERA-Interim (ECMWF Re-Analysis ERA-Interim) atmospheric forcing to assess the performance of the model. The model reproduces a rather realistic looking sea ice and hydrography. The model is used as part of the EU-funded Polar Regions in Earth System (PolarRES) project to get better understanding on sea-ice and ocean processes under present and future conditions.