Sensitivity of the Arctic sea ice representation to the ice thickness category resolution in an OGCM.
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| Title: | Sensitivity of the Arctic sea ice representation to the ice thickness category resolution in an OGCM. |
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| Authors: | Toyoda, Takahiro1,2 (AUTHOR) ttoyoda@mri-jma.go.jp, Urakawa, L. Shogo2 (AUTHOR), Sakamoto, Kei2 (AUTHOR), Kawakami, Yuma2 (AUTHOR), Aoki, Kunihiro2 (AUTHOR), Nakano, Hideyuki2 (AUTHOR), Takaya, Yuhei2 (AUTHOR), Toyama, Katsuya1 (AUTHOR), Kosugi, Naohiro1 (AUTHOR), Kitamura, Yoshiteru1 (AUTHOR), Ishii, Masao1 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Journal of Oceanography. Aug2025, Vol. 81 Issue 4, p273-288. 16p. |
| Subject Terms: | *General circulation model, *Ocean circulation, *Marine sciences, *Earth sciences, *Ice fields |
| Abstract: | The sea ice representation in ocean and climate models must be improved to better understand and predict the global climate system. Here, we investigate the sensitivity of the large-scale sea ice field to the resolution of the sea ice thickness distribution (ITD) categories used by an ocean general circulation model (OGCM). We conduct a baseline experiment with the five widely used thickness categories and a series of sensitivity experiments with higher resolutions for thick, middle, and thin ice sections of the ITD. Increasing the resolutions of the thick and middle ITD sections had little effect, but increasing the resolution of the thin ice section caused a marked increase in the Arctic sea ice volume (by about 10% of the absolute summertime volume). In that experiment, both subgrid-scale transport from thin to thicker ice in winter and openings in the thin ice cover were enhanced, easing ice movement and deformation in the melting season and increasing the amount of thicker multi-year ice. This accumulated multi-year ice affected the total Arctic sea ice volume interannually. Adding more thin ice categories to the conventional five categories improved the representation of the observed lognormal ice thickness distribution when the OGCM used a simple ice strength formulation, whereas in previous studies using a nonlinear ice strength formulation, a high-resolution ITD unrealistically reduced ice strength in the central Arctic. We expect our results to be useful in the development of sea ice models and the evaluation of international ensemble climate predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Database: | Energy & Power Source |
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