Journal
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-OCEANS
Volume 127, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021JC017667
Keywords
sea-ice deformation; rheology; model intercomparison project; sea-ice modeling; sea-ice observations; scaling analysis
Categories
Funding
- DOE [DE-SC0014378]
- HYCOM NOPP [N00014-19-1-2674]
- DoD High-Performance Computing Modernization Program at NRL SSC
- Danish State through the National centre for Climate Research
- Innovation Fund Denmark
- Horizon 2020 Framework Programe of the European Union [690462]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada [RGPIN 04357, RGPCC 433898]
- Natural Science and Engineering and Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Program
- Environment and Climate Change Canada Grants & Contributions program
- U.S. Department of Energy Regional and Global Model Analysis program
- Office of Naval Research Arctic and Global Prediction program
- National Science Foundation Arctic System Science program
- Projekt DEAL
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0014378] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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As sea-ice modeling becomes more advanced, models are now able to accurately resolve deformation features in Arctic sea ice. The Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims to evaluate state-of-the-art sea-ice models using different representations of sea-ice physics and model configurations. The study finds that both plastic and brittle sea-ice rheologies can reproduce observed deformation statistics, but model configuration and physical parameterizations have impacts as important as the choice of rheology.
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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