Benefits from representing snow properties and related processes in coupled ocean–sea ice models
Several large-scale sea ice simulations are performed over the last three decades using a coupled ocean– sea ice model under the same experimental setup but partly modifying the representation of snow physics in the model. The inter-simulation spread analysis yields that the simulated multi-year ice...
| Published in: | Ocean Modelling |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier Inc.
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/157622 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocemod.2014.11.005 |
| Summary: | Several large-scale sea ice simulations are performed over the last three decades using a coupled ocean– sea ice model under the same experimental setup but partly modifying the representation of snow physics in the model. The inter-simulation spread analysis yields that the simulated multi-year ice is sensitive to such changes while the seasonal sea ice, is rather dominantly driven by the external oceanic and atmospheric forcings. In the context of a thinning Arctic sea ice cover, those findings suggest that including snow processes in large-scale sea ice models is beneficial, if not necessary, to predict the timing of the Arctic multi-year ice disappearance, whereas the operational forecasting of first-year ice extent using fully coupled models will likely require improvement to the oceanic and atmospheric components themselves. |
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