An eddy-permitting ocean-sea ice general circulation model (E3SMv0-HiLAT03): Description and evaluation

• Main Authors: Zhang, Jiaxu, Weijer, Wilbert, Maltrud, Mathew Einar, Veneziani, Carmela, Jeffery, Nicole, Hunke, Elizabeth Clare, Urrego Blanco, Jorge Rolando, Wolfe, Jonathan David
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Arctic; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1542803; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1542803; https://doi.org/10.2172/1542803

We document modeling setups and present results for simulated ocean and sea ice climate from a recently developed, intermediate-resolution global ocean-sea ice model [Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 0 configured for High-Latitude Application and Testing at 0.3° resolution (E3SMv0-HiLAT03)]. The horizontal resolution of HiLAT03 ranges from 33 km in the tropics to 8.5 km at high latitudes, with 100 vertical levels. This resolution allows the explicit representation of some mesoscale eddies, particularly at lower latitudes, therefore being named as an “eddy-permitting model”. Analyses are presented based on the output of two 186-yr control simulations forced by modern atmospheric conditions of climatological and inter-annually varying data sets, respectively. Results are compared to available observational data sets and the 1° NCAR model, which has somewhat similar ocean physics but a coarser resolution and an earlier version of the sea ice component. Analyses focus on ocean temperature and salinity fields, ocean dynamics and circulations, sea ice concentrations and thicknesses. The HiLAT03 model does reasonably well in most oceanic aspects evaluated here, especially in ocean meridional heat transport, despite the fact that no explicit eddy parameterization is applied. Many Arctic sea ice features are much improved compared with the 1° NCAR model, but the Antarctic summer sea ice is still generally low in concentrations and thicknesses. In addition, we discuss the prolonged deep convection (“Antarctic prolonged polynya”) over the Southern Ocean in the inter-annually forced case.