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ToolsBarrell, Christopher, Renfrew, Ian A., Bennett, Miriam, Elvidge, Andrew D., Weiss, Alexandra, Methven, John, Blockley, Ed, Copsey, Dan, Graham, Tim and Krumpen, Thomas (2025) Rapid summertime sea ice melt in a coupled numerical weather prediction system. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17 (10). ISSN 1942-2466
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Abstract
Coupled Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models have only recently been implemented for short-term environmental prediction and both challenges and benefits are evident in polar regions. Their simulation of surface exchange over sea ice depends on the model's sea-ice characteristics, however these are hard to constrain due to a lack of in situ and accurate remotely sensed observations. We focus on the Fram Strait region during peak melt conditions and during the passage of an Arctic cyclone: very challenging conditions for coupled NWP. We use in situ aircraft observations from the Arctic Summertime Cyclones field campaign in July-August 2022, plus satellite products, to evaluate a set of 5-day forecasts from the Met Office Unified Model. Our model set ups are based on operational GC4 (Global Coupled 4) and developmental GC5 (Global Coupled 5) configurations, which use the CICE5.1 and SI3 sea-ice models respectively. We find a combination of deficiencies in the simulated sea-ice field, due to initialization and modeling problems. An initially low concentration of sea ice results in excessive absorption of shortwave radiation by the ocean, leading to excessive basal melting of the sea ice, and further sea-ice loss; leading to relatively poorly simulated sea-ice fields in general. In contrast, the passage of an Arctic cyclone and its impact on sea-ice velocities are captured well. Although we demonstrate several deficiencies in the short-term forecasts of two state-of-the-art coupled NWP models, we also find promising aspects of model performance and some clear benefits from a fully coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean system.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Data Availability Statement: The Arctic Summertime Cyclones MASIN flight data is archived at the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) at https://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/arcticcyclones. Met Office simulations are archived on the Met Office MASS archive and can be shared on request. IceBird summer 2022 campaign data is archived on PANGAEA (Krumpen et al., 2024). All processed data and code used to produce the figures in this article are available online from Barrell (2025). Acknowledgments: We thank the Arctic Summertime Cyclones project team funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (NE/T006773/1, NE/T006811/1, NE/T00682X/1), the operations staff of the British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter aircraft, particularly Dan Beeden for facilitating the visit to Station Nord, and the RALI-THINICE project team for their generous research cooperation. We also thank the Alfred Wegener Institute IceBird survey team for sharing their observations. EWB acknowledges funding from the Met Office Advancing Arctic meteorological and oceanographic Capabilities & services project, which is supported by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT). We thank the reviewers for their constructive feedback. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | arctic cyclones,numerical weather prediction,ocean-ice-atmosphere interaction,sea ice,global and planetary change,environmental chemistry,earth and planetary sciences(all),sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2306 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Nov 2025 16:30 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Nov 2025 01:27 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100995 |
| DOI: | 10.1029/2025MS004945 |
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