Using Arctic ice mass balance buoys for evaluation of modelled ice energy fluxes

West, Alex; Collins, Mat; Blockley, Ed

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4845-2020

Articles | Volume 13, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4845-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4845-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 10

Methods for assessment of models

|

09 Oct 2020

Methods for assessment of models |

| 09 Oct 2020

Using Arctic ice mass balance buoys for evaluation of modelled ice energy fluxes

Alex West, Mat Collins, and Ed Blockley

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4845-2020-supplement

Data sets

Arctic ice mass balance buoy data for use in calculating quantities to evaluate climate models A. E. West https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3773811

Monthly mean variables derived from Arctic Ice Mass Balance Buoy data, for evaluation of sea ice models A. E. West https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3773997

Figure code for publication 'Using Arctic ice mass balance buoys for evaluation of modelled ice energy fluxes' A. E. West https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3947782

Observing and understanding climate change: Monitoring the mass balance, motion, and thickness of Arctic sea ice D. Perovich, J. Richter-Menge, and C. Polashenski http://imb-crrel-dartmouth.org/results/

Model code and software

IMBS_MO A. E. West https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3975692

IMBS_Stage2_modeleval_MO A. E. West https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3971736

Short summary

This study calculates sea ice energy fluxes from data produced by ice mass balance buoys (devices measuring ice elevation and temperature). It is shown how the resulting dataset can be used to evaluate a coupled climate model (HadGEM2-ES), with biases in the energy fluxes seen to be consistent with biases in the sea ice state and surface radiation. This method has potential to improve sea ice model evaluation, so as to better understand spread in model simulations of sea ice state.