Design and Numerical Simulation of an Arctic Ocean Circulation and Thermodynamic Sea－Ice Model

In this paper, the first version of a new Arctic Ocean circulation and thermodynamic sea-ice model is presented by the authors based on the framework of a twenty-layer World Oceanic general circulation model developed by Zhang et al. in 1994, The model’s domain covers the Arctic Ocean and Greenland-Norwegian Seas with the horizon-tal resolution of 200 km × 200 km on a stereographic projection plane. In vertical, the model uses the Eta-coordinate (Sigma modified to have quasi-horizontal coordinate surfaces) and has ten unevenly-spaced layers to cover the deep-est water column of 3000 m. Two 150-year integrations of coupling the ocean circulation model with the sea-ice model have been performed with seasonally cyclic surface boundary conditions. The only difference between the two experiments is in the model’s geography. Some preliminary analyses of the experimental results have been done fo-cused on the following aspects: (1) surface layer temperature, salinity and current; (2) the "Atlantic Layer"; (3) sea-ice cover and its seasonal variation. In comparison with the available observational data, these results are accept-able with reasonable accuracy.

Design and numerical simulation of an Arctic Ocean circulation and thermodynamic sea-ice model

In this paper, the first version of a new Arctic Ocean circulation and thermodynamic sea-ice model is presented by the authors based on the framework of a twenty-layer World Oceanic general circulation model developed by Zhang et al. in 1994. The model’s domain covers the Arctic Ocean and Greenland-Norwegian Seas with the horizontal resolution of 200 km × 200 km on a stereographic projection plane. In vertical, the model uses the Eta-coordinate (Sigma modified to have quasi-horizontal coordinate surfaces) and has ien unevenly-spaced layers to cover the deepest water column of 3000 m. Two 150-year integrations of coupling the ocean circulation model with the sea-ice model have been performed with seasonally cyclic surface boundary conditions. The only difference between the two experiments is in the model’s geography. Some preliminary analyses of the experimental results have been done focused on the following aspects: (1) surface layer temperature, salinity and current; (2) the “Atlantic Layer”; (3) sea-ice cover and its seasonal variation. In comparison with the available observational data, these results are acceptable with reasonable accuracy. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.