Results from the implementation of the elastic viscous plastic sea ice rheology in HadCM3

W. Connolley (1) , A. Keen (2) , A. Mclaren (2)

1 BAS - British Antarctic Survey
2 MOHC - Met Office Hadley Centre

We present results of an implementation of the Elastic Viscous Plastic (EVP) sea ice dynamics scheme into the Hadley Centre coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model HadCM3. Although the large-scale simulation of sea ice in HadCM3 is quite good with this model, the lack of a full dynamical model leads to errors in the detailed representation of sea ice and limits our confidence in its future predictions. We find that introducing the EVP scheme results in a worse initial simulation of the sea ice. This paper documents various improvements made to improve the simulation, resulting in a sea ice simulation that is better than the original HadCM3 scheme overall. Importantly, it is more physically based and provides a more solid foundation for future improvement. We then consider the interannual variability of the sea ice in the new model and demonstrate improvements over the HadCM3 simulation.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère

W. Connolley, A. Keen, A. Mclaren. Results from the implementation of the elastic viscous plastic sea ice rheology in HadCM3. Ocean Science Discussions, 2006, 3 (4), pp.777-803. ⟨hal-00298398⟩