Results of recent Pacific-Arctic ice-ocean modeling studies at the Naval Postgraduate School

Summary of results from a high - resolution pan - Arctic ice -'ocean model are presented for the northern North Pacific, Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas.The main focus is on the mean circulation, communication from the Gulf of Alaska across the Bering Sea into the western Arctic Ocean and on mesoscale eddy activity within several important ecosystems. Model results from 1979 -2004 are compared to observations whenever possible. The high spatial model resolution at 1/12o (or～9 -km) in the horizontal and 45 levels in the vertical direction allows for representation of eddies with diameters as small as 36 km. However, we believe that upcoming new model integrations at even higher resolution will allow us to resolve even smaller eddies. This is especially important at the highest latitudes where the Rossby radius of deformation is as small as 10 km or less.