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How well can the observed Arctic sea ice summer retreat and winter advance be represented in the NCEP Climate Forecast System version 2?

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Abstract

The capability of a numerical model to simulate the statistical characteristics of the summer sea ice date of retreat (DOR) and the winter date of advance (DOA) is investigated using sea ice concentration output from the Climate Forecast System Version 2 model (CFSv2). Two model configurations are tested, the operational setting (CFSv2CFSR) which uses initial data from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis, and a modified version (CFSv2PIOMp) which ingests sea ice thickness initialization data from the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) and includes physics modifications for a more realistic representation of heat fluxes at the sea ice top and bottom. First, a method to define DOR and DOA is presented. Then, DOR and DOA are determined from the model simulations and observational sea ice concentration from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Means, trends, and detrended standard deviations of DOR and DOA are compared, along with DOR/DOA rates in the Arctic Ocean. It is found that the statistics are generally similar between the model and observations, although some regional biases exist. In addition, regions of new ice retreat in recent years are represented well in CFSv2PIOMp over the Arctic Ocean, in terms of both spatial extent and timing. Overall, CFSv2PIOMp shows a reduction in error throughout the Arctic. Based on results, it is concluded that the model produces a reasonable representation of the climatology and variability statistics of DOR and DOA in most regions. This assessment serves as a prerequisite for future predictability experiments.

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Acknowledgements

Support for WW and JZ was provided by the NOAA Climate Program Office (Grant NA15OAR4310170). JZ was also supported by NOAA/OAR under the auspices of the National Earth System Prediction Capability. PIOMAS data used in this study are available at ftp://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/data_piomas.html, NASA Team sea ice concentrations can be downloaded at ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS. The authors thank Peitao Peng and Michael Halpert for review of this manuscript. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INNOVIM, LLC, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Thomas W. Collow

  2. NOAA/NWS/NCEP Climate Prediction Center, NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, College Park, MD, USA

    Thomas W. Collow, Wanqiu Wang & Arun Kumar

  3. Polar Science Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jinlun Zhang

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  1. Thomas W. Collow
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  2. Wanqiu Wang
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  3. Arun Kumar
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  4. Jinlun Zhang
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Correspondence to Thomas W. Collow.

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Collow, T.W., Wang, W., Kumar, A. et al. How well can the observed Arctic sea ice summer retreat and winter advance be represented in the NCEP Climate Forecast System version 2?. Clim Dyn 49, 1651–1663 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3417-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3417-8

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