Improved sea-ice radiative processes in a global coupled climate model

The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) coupled global climate model was used to investigate the sensitivity of sea ice to improved representations of sea-ice radiative processes: (1) a more sophisticated surface albedo scheme and (2) the penetration of solar radiation in sea ice. The results show that the large-scale sea-ice conditions are very sensitive to the aforementioned parameterizations. Although the more sophisticated surface albedo scheme produces a more realistic seasonal cycle of the surface albedo as compared with the baseline simulation, the resulting higher albedo relative to the baseline simulation generates much more and thicker ice in the arctic. The penetration of solar radiation in sea-ice itself tends to reduce the ice cover and thickness in the entire arctic and the western antarctic, and increase the ice cover and thickness in the eastern antarctic. The combination of (1) and (2) significantly improves the simulations of the average ice thickness and its spatial distribution in the arctic. The atmospheric responses associated with sea-ice changes were also discussed. While improvements are seen, particularly of the ice thickness distribution, there are still some unrealistic aspects that will require further improvements to the sea-ice component.