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Going with the floe: tracking CESM Large Ensemble sea ice in the Arctic provides context for ship-based observations

Supporting Files


Details

  • Journal Title:
    The Cryosphere
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
    CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
  • Description:
    In recent decades, Arctic sea ice has shifted toward a younger, thinner, seasonal ice regime. Studying and understanding this “new” Arctic will be the focus of a year-long ship campaign beginning in autumn 2019. Lagrangian tracking of sea ice floes in the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble (CESM-LE) during representative “perennial” and “seasonal” time periods allows for understanding of the conditions that a floe could experience throughout the calendar year. These model tracks, put into context a single year of observations, provide guidance on how observations can optimally shape model development, and how climate models could be used in future campaign planning. The modeled floe tracks show a range of possible trajectories, though a Transpolar Drift trajectory is most likely. There is also a small but emerging possibility of high-risk tracks, including possible melt of the floe before the end of a calendar year. We find that a Lagrangian approach is essential in order to correctly compare the seasonal cycle of sea ice conditions between point-based observations and a model. Because of high variability in the melt season sea ice conditions, we recommend in situ sampling over a large range of ice conditions for a more complete understanding of how ice type and surface conditions affect the observed processes. We find that sea ice predictability emerges rapidly during the autumn freeze-up and anticipate that process-based observations during this period may help elucidate the processes leading to this change in predictability.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    The Cryosphere, 14(4), 1259-1271
  • DOI:
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
    Arctic Ocean
  • License:
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY
  • Compliance:
    Library
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha256:128546b0351ed3c21d5e3fdb839093f570bb9d240ad1d23fab4c378e36e307bf
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 6.42 MB ]
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