Elizabeth C. Hunke

The Community Climate System Model Version 4

AbstractThe fourth version of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) was recently completed and released to the climate community. This paper describes developments to all CCSM components, and documents fully coupled preindustrial control runs compared to the previous version, CCSM3. Using the standard atmosphere and land resolution of 1° results in the sea surface temperature biases in the major upwelling regions being comparable to the 1.4°-resolution CCSM3. Two changes to the deep convection scheme in the atmosphere component result in CCSM4 producing El Nino–Southern Oscillation variability with a much more realistic frequency distribution than in CCSM3, although the amplitude is too large compared to observations. These changes also improve the Madden–Julian oscillation and the frequency distribution of tropical precipitation. A new overflow parameterization in the ocean component leads to an improved simulation of the Gulf Stream path and the North Atlantic Ocean meridional overturning circulati...

An elastic-viscous-plastic model for sea ice dynamics

The standard model for sea ice dynamics treats the ice pack as a visco‐plastic material that flows plastically under typical stress conditions but behaves as a linear viscous fluid where strain rates are small and the ice becomes nearly rigid. Because of large viscosities in these regions, implicit numerical methods are necessary for time steps larger than a few seconds. Current solution methods for these equations use iterative relaxation methods, which are time consuming, scale poorly with mesh resolution, and are not well adapted to parallel computation. To remedy this, the authors developed and tested two separate methods. First, by demonstrating that the viscous‐plastic rheology can be represented by a symmetric, negative definite matrix operator, the much faster and better behaved preconditioned conjugate gradient method was implemented. Second, realizing that only the response of the ice on timescales associated with wind forcing need be accurately resolved, the model was modified so that it reduces to the viscous‐plastic model at these timescales, whereas at shorter timescales the adjustment process takes place by a numerically more efficient elastic wave mechanism. This modification leads to a fully explicit numerical scheme that further improves the model’s computational efficiency and is a great advantage for implementations on parallel machines. Furthermore, it is observed that the standard viscous‐plastic model has poor dynamic response to forcing on a daily timescale, given the standard time step (1 day) used by the ice modeling community. In contrast, the explicit discretization of the elastic wave mechanism allows the elastic‐viscous‐plastic model to capture the ice response to variations in the imposed stress more accurately. Thus, the elastic‐viscous‐plastic model provides more accurate results for shorter timescales associated with physical forcing, reproduces viscous‐plastic model behavior on longer timescales, and is computationally more efficient overall.

Improved Sea Ice Shortwave Radiation Physics in CCSM4: The Impact of Melt Ponds and Aerosols on Arctic Sea Ice*

AbstractThe Community Climate System Model, version 4 has revisions across all components. For sea ice, the most notable improvements are the incorporation of a new shortwave radiative transfer scheme and the capabilities that this enables. This scheme uses inherent optical properties to define scattering and absorption characteristics of snow, ice, and included shortwave absorbers and explicitly allows for melt ponds and aerosols. The deposition and cycling of aerosols in sea ice is now included, and a new parameterization derives ponded water from the surface meltwater flux. Taken together, this provides a more sophisticated, accurate, and complete treatment of sea ice radiative transfer. In preindustrial CO2 simulations, the radiative impact of ponds and aerosols on Arctic sea ice is 1.1 W m−2 annually, with aerosols accounting for up to 8 W m−2 of enhanced June shortwave absorption in the Barents and Kara Seas and with ponds accounting for over 10 W m−2 in shelf regions in July. In double CO2 (2XCO2) ...

Influence of the Sea Ice Thickness Distribution on Polar Climate in CCSM3

Abstract The sea ice simulation of the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) T42-gx1 and T85-gx1 control simulations is presented and the influence of the parameterized sea ice thickness distribution (ITD) on polar climate conditions is examined. This includes an analysis of the change in mean climate conditions and simulated sea ice feedbacks when an ITD is included. It is found that including a representation of the subgrid-scale ITD results in larger ice growth rates and thicker sea ice. These larger growth rates represent a higher heat loss from the ocean ice column to the atmosphere, resulting in warmer surface conditions. Ocean circulation, most notably in the Southern Hemisphere, is also modified by the ITD because of the influence of enhanced high-latitude ice formation on the ocean buoyancy flux and resulting deep water formation. Changes in atmospheric circulation also result, again most notably in the Southern Hemisphere. There are indications that the ITD also modifies simulated sea...

What controls primary production in the Arctic Ocean? Results from an intercomparison of five general circulation models with biogeochemistry

As a part of Arctic Ocean Intercomparison Project, results from five coupled physical and biological ocean models were compared for the Arctic domain, defined here as north of 66.6°N. The global and regional (Arctic Ocean (AO)–only) models included in the intercomparison show similar features in terms of the distribution of present-day water column–integrated primary production and are broadly in agreement with in situ and satellite-derived data. However, the physical factors controlling this distribution differ between the models. The intercomparison between models finds substantial variation in the depth of winter mixing, one of the main mechanisms supplying inorganic nutrients over the majority of the AO. Although all models manifest similar level of light limitation owing to general agreement on the ice distribution, the amount of nutrients available for plankton utilization is different between models. Thus the participating models disagree on a fundamental question: which factor, light or nutrients, controls present-day Arctic productivity. These differences between models may not be detrimental in determining present-day AO primary production since both light and nutrient limitation are tightly coupled to the presence of sea ice. Essentially, as long as at least one of the two limiting factors is reproduced correctly, simulated total primary production will be close to that observed. However, if the retreat of Arctic sea ice continues into the future as expected, a decoupling between sea ice and nutrient limitation will occur, and the predictive capabilities of the models may potentially diminish unless more effort is spent on verifying the mechanisms of nutrient supply. Our study once again emphasizes the importance of a realistic representation of ocean physics, in particular vertical mixing, as a necessary foundation for ecosystem modeling and predictions.

Ridging, strength, and stability in high-resolution sea ice models

[1] In multicategory sea ice models the compressive strength of the ice pack is often assumed to be a function of the potential energy of pressure ridges. This assumption, combined with other standard features of ridging schemes, allows the ice strength to change dramatically on short timescales. In high-resolution (∼10 km) sea ice models with a typical time step (∼1 hour), abrupt strength changes can lead to large internal stress gradients that destabilize the flow. The unstable flow is characterized by large oscillations in ice concentration, thickness, strength, velocity, and strain rates. Straightforward, physically motivated changes in the ridging scheme can reduce the likelihood of abrupt strength changes and improve stability. In simple test problems with flow toward and around topography, stability is significantly enhanced by eliminating the threshold fraction G* in the ridging participation function. Use of an exponential participation function increases the maximum stable time step at 10-km resolution from less than 30 min to about 2 hours. Modifying the redistribution function to build thinner ridges modestly improves stability and also gives better agreement between modeled and observed thickness distributions. Allowing the ice strength to increase linearly with the mean ice thickness improves stability but probably underestimates the maximum stresses.

Late-Twentieth-Century Simulation of Arctic Sea Ice and Ocean Properties in the CCSM4

AbstractTo establish how well the new Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4) simulates the properties of the Arctic sea ice and ocean, results from six CCSM4 twentieth-century ensemble simulations are compared here with the available data. It is found that the CCSM4 simulations capture most of the important climatological features of the Arctic sea ice and ocean state well, among them the sea ice thickness distribution, fraction of multiyear sea ice, and sea ice edge. The strongest bias exists in the simulated spring-to-fall sea ice motion field, the location of the Beaufort Gyre, and the temperature of the deep Arctic Ocean (below 250 m), which are caused by deficiencies in the simulation of the Arctic sea level pressure field and the lack of deep-water formation on the Arctic shelves. The observed decrease in the sea ice extent and the multiyear ice cover is well captured by the CCSM4. It is important to note, however, that the temporal evolution of the simulated Arctic sea ice cover over the...

Maintenance of the Sea-Ice Edge

Abstract A coupled global climate model is used to evaluate processes that determine the equilibrium location of the sea-ice edge and its climatological annual cycle. The extent to which the wintertime ice edge departs from a symmetric ring around either pole depends primarily on coastlines, ice motion, and the melt rate at the ice–ocean interface. At any location the principal drivers of the oceanic heat flux that melts sea ice are absorbed solar radiation and the convergence of heat transported by ocean currents. The distance between the ice edge and the pole and the magnitude of the ocean heat flux convergence at the ice edge are inversely related. The chief exception to this rule is in the East Greenland Current, where the ocean heat flux convergence just east of the ice edge is relatively high but ice survives due to its swift southward motion and the protection of the cold southward-flowing surface water. In regions where the ice edge extends relatively far equatorward, absorbed solar radiation is t...

The Elastic–Viscous–Plastic Sea Ice Dynamics Model in General Orthogonal Curvilinear Coordinates on a Sphere—Incorporation of Metric Terms

Abstract A new discretization for the elastic–viscous–plastic (EVP) sea ice dynamics model incorporates metric terms to account for grid curvature effects in curvilinear coordinate systems. A fundamental property of the viscous–plastic ice rheology that is invariant under changes of coordinate system is utilized; namely, the work done by internal forces, to derive an energy dissipative discretization of the divergence of the stress tensor that includes metric terms. Comparisons of simulations using an older EVP numerical model with the new formulation highlight the effect of the metric terms, which can be significant when ice deformation is allowed to affect the ice strength.

Modeling Sea Ice Transport Using Incremental Remapping

Sea ice models contain transport equations for the area, volume, and energy of ice and snow in various thickness categories. These equations typically are solved with first-order-accurate upwind schemes, which are very diffusive; with second-order-accurate centered schemes, which are highly oscillatory; or with more sophisticated second-order schemes that are computationally costly if many quantities must be transported [e.g., multidimensional positive-definite advection transport algorithm (MPDATA)]. Here an incremental remapping scheme, originally designed for horizontal transport in ocean models, is adapted for sea ice transport. This scheme has several desirable features: it preserves the monotonicity of both conserved quantities and tracers; it is second-order accurate except where the accuracy is reduced locally to preserve monotonicity; and it efficiently solves the large number of equations in sea ice models with multiple thickness categories and tracers. Remapping outperforms the first-order upwind scheme and basic MPDATA scheme in several simple test problems. In realistic model runs, remapping is less diffusive than the upwind scheme and about twice as fast as MPDATA.