C06: Impact of Arctic Mesh Refinement on Sea Ice State

Owned by
Andrew Roberts
, created
Last updated: Jun 24, 2023
2 min read

Full Title

Impact of Arctic Mesh Refinement on Global Sea Ice State in E3SM

First Author

  • @Andrew Roberts

    • afroberts@lanl.gov

All Authors

@Elizabeth Hunke @Nicole Jeffery @Erin Thomas @Luke Van Roekel @Xylar Asay-Davis @LeAnn Conlon @Katherine Smith @Mathew Maltrud @Mark Petersen @Qi Tang @Chris Golaz @Xue Zheng @Jon Wolfe @Milena Veneziani

Topic

‘Coupled System’

Project

E3SM and InteRFACE

Abstract

This poster summarizes key attributes of the global sea ice solution in the E3SMv2 North American Regionally Refined Model (NARRM) relative to the standard coupled model. We compare 500-year preindustrial simulations of the two models as well as historical ensembles to understand the impact of 14km marine regional refinement over the entire Arctic Ocean and North American coastal regions. This is coupled to 25km atmospheric refinement extending to abyssal areas off North American coasts. The refinement is compared to the standard model with 30-60km and 100km respective standard resolution ocean and atmosphere meshes. Using daily sea ice means from E3SM, our analysis indicates there is a marked increase in northern hemisphere sea ice volume with regional refinement, but little improvement in Arctic and Antarctic winter sea ice extent. For the industrial period, we inter-compare 5-member ensembles against the latest version of the NOAA Climate Data Record of ice concentration and the Pathfinder dataset of sea ice drift. These comparisons indicate there is little improvement in E3SM as compared to the observed winter ice edge even with Atlantic regional refinement, and that the NARRM model configuration does not resolve a chronic ice-edge bias in the model. The end-of-melt-season trend in northern hemisphere extent, as measured on the equinox, is similar and largely unbiased as compared to observations, while the southern hemisphere is biased and the trend has the wrong sign in E3SM. Both models produce markedly different circulation patterns in the Arctic relative to the Pathfinder drift dataset, however results from that dataset draw into question its veracity, and we are investigating this further by comparing with independent buoy drift datasets.

In-person

yes

Poster

 

Discussion Link

https://acme-climate.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PSC/pages/3833463412