Development of a 3-D Sea Ice Model for Climate Applications

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The fundamental scientific question to be addressed by this research is: "How do different physical processes influence the response of sea ice to a heat flux perturbation?" A new 3-D sea ice model for climate applications will be developed. This research is motivated by large discrepancies between the response of the 1-D thermodynamic and 2-D dynamic/thermodynamia models (both widely used in climate simulations) to a surface heat flux perturbation such as would arise from a CO2doubling. Uncertainties regarding important physical processes occurring in sea ice still remain, and further observational data (and analyses of existing data) are required. However, there is a sufficient amount known about the individual physical processes and significant progress can be made in sea ice modeling by synthesizing state-of-the-art understanding of the different physical processes currently included in l-D and 2-D models into a 3-D dynamic/thermodynamic sea ice model. The success of a single-cell thermodynamic/dynamic sea ice model that was developed recently by the investigator's research group is very encouraging in this regard. Building upon previous and ongoing research activities, sea ice modeling for applications in climate models will be developed as follows; a) improve a single-cell thermodynamic/dynamic sea ice model and test it against field and satellite observations b) conduct sensitivity studies using the single-cell model to assess simplifications that can be made to improve computational efficiency c) incorporate the processes deemed necessary in the single-cell studies into a 3-D dynamic/thermodynamic sea ice model; d) assess if further simplifications of the 3-D model can be made to improve computational efficiency e) conduct basin-wide simulations to assess model performance be comparing with observations and to assess model sensitivity to heat flux and momentum perturbations. A product of this work will be a comprehensive, modular, well-documented, and publi clyavailable 3-D sea ice model that can serve as a tool for a variety of researchers involved in polar applications, and that could provide an improved sea ice component for regional and climate system models.