Should Sea-Ice Modeling Tools Designed for Climate Research Be Used for Short-Term Forecasting?
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ADVANCES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN EARTH SYSTEM MODELLING (I SIMPSON, SECTION EDITOR)
Should Sea-Ice Modeling Tools Designed for Climate Research Be Used for Short-Term Forecasting? Elizabeth Hunke1 · Richard Allard2 · Philippe Blain3 · Ed Blockley4 · Daniel Feltham5 · Thierry Fichefet6 · Gilles Garric7 · Robert Grumbine8 · Jean-Franc¸ois Lemieux3 · Till Rasmussen9 · Mads Ribergaard9 · Andrew Roberts1 · Axel Schweiger10 · Steffen Tietsche11 · Bruno Tremblay12 · Martin Vancoppenolle13 · Jinlun Zhang10
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In theory, the same sea-ice models could be used for both research and operations, but in practice, differences in scientific and software requirements and computational and human resources complicate the matter. Although sea-ice modeling tools developed for climate studies and other research applications produce output of interest to operational forecast users, such as ice motion, convergence, and internal ice pressure, the relevant spatial and temporal scales may not be sufficiently resolved. For instance, sea-ice research codes are typically run with horizontal resolution of more than 3 km, while mariners need information on scales less than 300 m. Certain sea-ice processes and coupled feedbacks that are critical to simulating the Earth system may not be relevant on these scales; and therefore, the most important model upgrades for improving sea-ice predictions might be made in the atmosphere and ocean components of coupled models or in their coupling mechanisms, rather than in the sea-ice model itself. This paper discusses some of the challenges in applying sea-ice modeling tools developed for research purposes for operational forecasting on short time scales, and highlights promising new directions in sea-ice modeling. Keywords Sea ice · Climate · Model · Numerical weather prediction
Introduction Broadly speaking, there are three overlapping communities of sea-ice modelers: those who are interested in understanding and accurately simulating the detailed physical processes, climate modelers who are interested in computationally efficient representations of large-scale sea-ice characteristics and processes, and the operational forecasting community, who are interested in models that produce efficient, skillful predictions for a range of spatio-temporal
This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Topical Collection on Advances and Future Directions in Earth System Modelling Elizabeth Hunke
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scales. A fourth community does not perform the modeling work itself but uses the results: policy makers and other stakeholders, such as mariners. Numerical weather forecasting centers traditionally have used relatively simple sea-ice models1 , mainly as surface boundary conditions for their atmospheric simulations. However, as codes in the sea-ice and climate research community have matured, and as resources have grown to allow more computationally ambitious simulation procedures and fully coupled atmosp
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