Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx): 1. Scaling and Statistical Properties of Sea-Ice Deformation Fields
International audience As the sea-ice modeling community is shifting to advanced numerical frameworks, developing new sea-ice rheologies, and increasing model spatial resolution, ubiquitous deformation features in the Arctic sea ice are now being resolved by sea-ice models. Initiated at the Forum fo...
Published in: | Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Other Authors: | , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
HAL CCSD
2022
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-03683297 https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-03683297/document https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-03683297/file/JGR%20Oceans%20-%202022%20-%20Bouchat%20-%20Sea%20Ice%20Rheology%20Experiment%20SIREx%201%20Scaling%20and%20Statistical%20Properties%20of%20Sea%25u2010Ice.pdf https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017667 |
Summary: | International audience As the sea-ice modeling community is shifting to advanced numerical frameworks, developing new sea-ice rheologies, and increasing model spatial resolution, ubiquitous deformation features in the Arctic sea ice are now being resolved by sea-ice models. Initiated at the Forum for Arctic Modeling and Observational Synthesis, the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims at evaluating state-of-the-art sea-ice models using existing and new metrics to understand how the simulated deformation fields are affected by different representations of sea-ice physics (rheology) and by model configuration. Part 1 of the SIREx analysis is concerned with evaluation of the statistical distribution and scaling properties of sea-ice deformation fields from 35 different simulations against those from the RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS). For the first time, the viscous-plastic (and the elastic-viscous-plastic variant), elastic-anisotropic-plastic, and Maxwell-elasto-brittle rheologies are compared in a single study. We find that both plastic and brittle sea-ice rheologies have the potential to reproduce the observed RGPS deformation statistics, including multi-fractality. Model configuration (e.g., numerical convergence, atmospheric representation, spatial resolution) and physical parameterizations (e.g., ice strength parameters and ice thickness distribution) both have effects as important as the choice of sea-ice rheology on the deformation statistics. It is therefore not straightforward to attribute model performance to a specific rheological framework using current deformation metrics. In light of these results, we further evaluate the statistical properties of simulated Linear Kinematic Features in a SIREx Part 2 companion paper. |
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